Biography

Beginnings - To Broadway And Back - At Home On Tin Pan Alley - The "Big 6" And 250 Others

Beginnings

Moses Jaffe was born in Vilna, Russia (now Vilnius, Lithuania) October 23, 1901, and left for America almost immediately, carried into emigration at the age of six months. His family settled in Keyport, New Jersey, where his father peddled dry goods and owned a stable.

After graduating from Keyport High School, Moe worked his way through the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (class of '23) and Law School (class of '26) by playing piano and leading a campus dance band, Jaffe's Collegians.

The popularity of Jaffe's Collegians led to two major milestones in Moe's life. On a personal level, it brought him in contact with Gladys Matusow (class of '27), who booked the band for a sorority dance and married the bandleader in 1930.

Professionally, it was the band's theme song, Collegiate, that turned the law student toward Tin Pan Alley. Written by Moe and fellow law student Nat Bonx, Collegiate was well known on the Penn campus when Fred Waring (a Penn State grad) brought his Pennsylvanians to play at the U of P's annual Ivy Ball. At the ball, Waring received so many requests for Collegiate that he first assumed it was a published song. When he learned that the writers were on campus, introductions were made and on April 4, 1925, Waring's Pennsylvanians recorded Collegiate at the Victor studios in Camden, NJ. If the recording had not become a hit, it would still have historical significance as the first electronic recording of a song; that is, the first to use electronic microphones rather than recording horns.

Within the year, Waring's recording helped make Collegiate the number three song in the country, selling over one million copies of sheet music. Over the years, the song sold over five million discs and was "interpolated" into several movies -- most notably, Chico Marx's piano version in "Horse Feathers" (1932).

The success of Collegiate did not prevent Moe from finishing law school; in fact, he always insisted that his legal training was invaluable in negotiating contracts and researching copyrights. But it certainly changed his focus.

With Nat Bonx (who did become a practicing lawyer), Moe quickly followed up with thematic spin-offs like Collegiate Blues (1925) and I Love The College Girls (1927), both recorded by Waring's Pennsylvanians.

In the summer of 1927, with law degree in hand and cash in the bank, Moe joined his band-mates in Europe, sailing home before all his money ran out. He had quickly learned the value of money -- and a hit song.

To Broadway And Back

From the late 1920s through the mid '40s, Moe's songwriting credits made Moe Jaffe and His Orchestra a Philadelphia favorite. Their dance music was broadcast live from the Georgian Room of the Benjamin Franklin Hotel.

They received marquee billing at Atlantic City's Steel Pier. And for many summers, he led the band north to Poland Spring, Maine, where they served as the house orchestra at the fashionable Poland Spring House.

But, in the inverted world of show business, bandleading was only Moe's "day job". Between gigs, he continued to pursue his songwriting career -- primarily as a lyricist, although he also wrote the music for some songs. In 1929, the Shubert Brothers offered a helping hand.

Two years earlier, a Shubert production, "Listen, Dearie" included the song Sweetest Little Girl, by Moe Jaffe, Nat Bonx and Clay Boland. Then, in 1929, Moe contributed songs to three revues produced by the Messrs. Shubert: Pleasure Bound, A Night in Venice and Broadway Nights. None of them was a smash hit, but they did reward Moe with the generous sum of $50 for every week each show ran.

Despite those "Broadway Nights," it was actually the Philadelphia stage that introduced one of Moe's most successful songs, The Gypsy In My Soul, written with Clay Boland in 1937 for the 50th annual production of the University of Pennsylvania's Mask & Wig Show.

In those days, "varsity shows" were major productions, playing in legitimate theaters and drawing large audiences from outside the university community. But despite their popularity, the commercial value of their songs was neither recognized nor exploited; typically, the songs were printed in a portfolio and sold as souvenirs. Then in 1935, Brooks Bowman wrote East Of The Sun for a Princeton Triangle show and changed the rules. After that, contributing songwriters were able to secure independent publication of their songs, which were published in individual copies, orchestrated for dance and recorded by name artists.

So, instead of simply donating his creative services to his alma mater, Moe teamed up with Clay Boland (a Penn Dental student when Moe was in Law School) to write the scores for a total of nine Mask & Wig shows between 1936 and 1950. Considering that The Gypsy In My Soul has been recorded at least 80 times since then, it was clearly a smart move for Jaffe and Boland to retain the rights.

At Home On Tin Pan Alley

"Book shows" like the Mask & Wig productions provide songwriters with a context. But when he wasn't writing for shows, Moe had to create his own context, turning to various sources for inspiration, adaptation and collaboration.

In 1937, for example, Moe teamed up with Henry Tobias and Larry Vincent to write If I Had My Life To Live Over, a sentimental waltz that caught on after WWII when it was featured by Kate Smith, Buddy Clark and Bob Eberly, among others. Buddy Clark's untimely death in 1949 gave the title an ironic meaning, and his 1947 recording was taken out of play.

In 1941, Moe, Nat Bonx and musician Jack Fulton adapted Anton Rubenstein's classical Romance, added lyrics, and called their version If You Are But A Dream. After Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra introduced the song (with Bob Eberly's vocal), it went on to take a permanent place among Frank Sinatra's greatest hits -- recorded on Columbia with Axel Stordahl's arrangement, and on Capitol with Nelson Riddle's arrangement.

In 1944, Moe took credit for words and music, without collaboration, on Bell Bottom Trousers -- although he would freely admit that it wasn't an entirely original concept. For a hundred years or more, sailors sang a much bawdier version of the tune, much too "blue" for the times.

Fortunately, Moe's cleaned-up version was tame enough for Ruth McCullough to sing when Tony Pastor's orchestra recorded the song. And additional recordings by Guy Lombardo, Louis Prima, Jerry Colonna and others made Bell Bottom Trousers Tune-Dex Digest's number two selling song for 1944-45 (second to Don't Fence Me In).

With hits like that under his belt, it was time for Moe to say goodbye to Philadelphia, ease out of the band business, and establish himself geographically in New York. For awhile, he actually had an office in the famous Brill Building at 1619 Broadway, the spiritual heart of Tin Pan Alley.

In the mid 1940s, he formed a business collaboration with Paul Kapp, a personal manager for musical artists. Together, they founded General Music Publishing Company, which had its first big hit in 1948 with Moe's song I'm My Own Grandpaw, co-written with Dwight Latham.

Latham was a singer with The Jesters, a popular trio known for their novelty songs. He was probably the one who remembered an anecdote, attributed to Mark Twain, that described someone who became his own grandfather by marrying his daughter's step-mother. A more recent (and credible) attribution indicates that the song was based on a story called Singular Intermarriages printed in Charles Bombaugh's "Gleanings" in 1870. Whatever its origins, I'm My Own Grandpaw has been consistently performed and recorded ever since -- including a 2001 release by Willie Nelson.

The "Big 6" And 250 Others

Collegiate, The Gypsy In My Soul, If I Had My Life To Live Over, If You Are But A Dream, Bell Bottom Trousers and I'm My Own Grandpaw are the stars of Moe Jaffe's catalog -- the "big six" standards that earned their place in the American Songbook.

Beyond those six are over 250 titles written over the better part of four decades, reflecting the tastes and styles of each passing era.

Some are novelty numbers: Oh, You Sweet One, written with Paul Kapp in 1949, recorded by The Andrews Sisters; Bread And Gravy, written with Dwight Latham in 1948, recorded by Homer and Jethro; and I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones, written with Lanny Grey and Peter Lind Hayes, recorded by the Hoosier Hot Shots.

The Big Band era saw: I Don't Know From Nothin', written with Henry Tobias in 1949, recorded by Don Cornell and Laura Leslie with the Sammy Kaye Orchestra; It's Just A Matter Of Opinion, written with Carl Lampl in 1946, recorded by Gene Krupa; An Apple A Day, written with Clay Boland in 1936, recorded by Hal Kemp; and Charlie Was A Boxer, written with George Keefer and Vincent Lopez in 1940, recorded by Lopez.

There are topical pieces: Thumbs Up, the Official Theme Song of the British War Relief Society, written in 1941 with Jack O'Brien and Bert Lown; and Ingemar, written with Olle Bergman in 1959 in honor of heavyweight champion, Ingemar Johansson, recorded in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Flemish and Icelandic.

A few Jaffe songs have a spiritual or gospel flavor: Get Together With The Lord, written with Bickley Reichner in 1945, recorded by Andy Kirk's Orchestra with The Jubalaires; Pray, written with Reichner and Clay Boland in 1950, recorded by Hank Snow; Just Whisper, written with Reichner in 1951, recorded by Savannah Churchill; and These Things Are Known (Only To God), written with Paul Kapp in 1951, recorded by Jan Peerce.

In the 1960s, each of these genres had seen better days and Moe joined the ranks of writers who, for one reason or another, just didn't get the changes in the music. Fortunately, General Music Publishing enjoyed a few more prosperous years by publishing a song called I Left My Heart In San Francisco, written by Douglass Cross and George Cory.

By the time of Tony Bennett's hit, Moe was suffering from Parkinson's Disease and his overall health was failing. He passed away on December 2, 1972, and is remembered fondly by all those who enjoyed his humor, appreciated his gentle ways and sang his songs.