The subject of this biographical sketch is Harry Von Tilzer, an individual who had great impact upon American popular music in general and barbershop harmony in particular. Although his name may be unknown to you, or you may have heard of him only in passing but know very little about the person and his accomplishments, he was an absolute force of nature on Tin Pan Alley, burlesque and vaudeville as a top-tier song writer, lyricist, producer, and director throughout the first quarter of the 20th Century and the composer of many of barbershop’s all-time classics, both up tunes and ballads. Wickipedia (the on-line encyclopedia) and Knowledgerush.com (another internet reference site) are the main sources for the final section of this article. I have mixed and matched excerpts from both and I have, accordingly, put that final section fully in quotes. Although Von Tilzer wrote such mega barbershop hits as “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad”, and “Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie”, my personal favorite (I suspect the favorite of almost all baritones past and present) was, oddly enough, only mentioned once in all of the information I went through while preparing for this article. That song is the gorgeous ballad “Last Night Was the End of the World”, composed in 1912. The swipe on “bye” (the phrase is “good bye”) is a “died and gone to heaven” experience for baritones, especially if the chorus director or the other three singers in the quartet have the good sense (and the decency) to wait – at least forever – for the bari, who resolves the chord, to determine the duration of the crescendo and the final release. Harry’s lesser-known younger brother, Albert, was none too shabby as a song writer himself, having penned “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time” and a beloved song that is one of the most frequently sung in public throughout the United States to this day (and probably will be for as long as the game of baseball is played); I refer to “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”. I guess you can file this under “nothing succeeds like success”, but all four of Harry’s brothers changed their last name to Von Tilzer after Harry became famous, to cash in on their big brother’s celebrity. To give you an idea of the staying power of Von Tilzer’s music, consider that his first Broadway musical opened in 1901 and his last – a retrospective of his life’s work – closed in 1981. That would be 8/10ths of a century between those two points in time, and Harry Von Tilzer was a powerful presence in popular American music all along that lengthy continuum. All told, Von Tilzer wrote the music to hundreds of individual songs (no where did I see an exact number cited) and for eighteen Broadway musicals including two of the Ziegfeld Follies. He also produced and/or directed many of those same shows as well as others for which he did not write the music. I recently heard the following anecdote about Von Tilzer on a radio talk show. In the early years of the 20th century in a Tin Pan Alley publishing house, Harry heard the work of an aspiring songwriter, then unknown to him, whom he thought to be extraordinarily gifted. He asked this young songsmith his name. “Izzy Belin” (pronounced bay-lin) replied the young man. You’ll never get famous with a name like that, Harry said, and suggested the name by which the world has forever since known him…Irving Berlin. A few years thereafter Berlin’s name was indeed well known throughout the land as his first hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, swept the nation and topped the sheet music charts in 1911.
“Harry Von Tilzer was born Aaron Gummbinsky (later changed to Harry Gumm) in Detroit, MI, on July 8, 1872. He ran away from home and joined a traveling circus at the age of fourteen. There he created his new name by adding “Von” (to give it class so he thought) to his mother's maiden name of Tilzer. Harry soon proved successful playing piano and calliope and writing new tunes and incidental music for the circus shows. He continued doing this in burlesque and vaudeville, writing many songs which were subsequently never published or which he sold to other entertainers for the lordly sum of a dollar or two apiece. In 1898 he sold his song "My Old New Hampshire Home" to a publisher for $15, and watched it become a national hit, selling over 2 million copies of the sheet music. This prompted him to become a professional songwriter. Soon thereafter he was made a partner in the Shapiro-Bernstein Company, a NYC music publishing house. "A Bird In A Gilded Cage" written in 1900 became one of the biggest hits of the age. Von Tilzer went on to become one of the best known and most popular of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters. In 1902 he formed his own publishing company where he was soon joined by his younger brother, Albert, (1878-1956). During his last twenty years, Harry’s career in music was essentially inactive. He did, however, rest on his very considerable laurels and routinely hold court in NYC as an undisputed senior member of popular music royalty. He died in New York City on January 10, 1946.”
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