Gus Edwards Biography

	Gus Simon Born: 1879-08-18 Birthplace: Hohensalza, Germany Died: 1945-11-07 Race: White Field: Songwriter Famous for: In My Merry Oldsmobile
Field: Songwriter

Edwards was a songwriter and vaudevillian, but he also organized his own theater companies and was a music publisher.

Gus Edwards was born Gus Simon in Hohensalza, Germany. When he was seven, his family moved to the United States, ending up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. During the day, he worked in the family cigar store, and in the evenings, he wandered looking for any sort of show business job. He found work as a singer at various lodge halls, on ferry boat lounges, in saloons, and even between bouts at the athletic clubs. There is a story that in the early 1890s Gus met up with famed prizefighter John L. Sullivan, by then was working in vaudeville, who was so impresssed by the youngster that he decided to him in his act.

As a very young boy, Gus worked as a song plugger at Koster and Bial's, at Tony Pastor's theatre, and at the Bowery Theatre. In those old vaudeville days, song publishers would often hire a very young boy to sit in the theatre, and immediately after a vaudeville star had sung one of the publisher's songs, the youngster would stand up in the audience, and pretending to be completely overcome by the song, break out in an "extemporaneous" solo of the same tune. In this way, the young Gus Edwards would often sit in a balcony seat, and then stand and repeat a song that vaudeville stars such as Maggie Cline, Lottie Gilson or Emma Carus had just sung.

In 1896, Gus was just 17 years old and appearing at Johnny Palmer's Gaiety Saloon in Brooklyn, when James Hyde, a vaudeville agent, saw him performing. He booked a tour for Gus and four other boys as The Newsboys Quintet act. In 1898, while performing in this act, Gus wrote his first song, to a lyric by Tom Daly, "All I Want is My Black Baby Back". Gus couldn't write music at that time, so he hired Charles Previn to write down the notes. May Irwin sang the song in her act, and helped to popularize it.

While entertaining soldiers at Camp Black, during the Spanish-American War, Gus met lyricist Will Cobb, and they formed their "Words and Music", a partnership (nicknamed "Words and Music") that lasted for many years. He was a vaudeville singer, and later had his own vaudeville company. He discovered Walter Winchell, Elsie Janis, Eddie Cantor, Georgie Price, Lila Lee, Eleanor Powell, Ray Bolger, the Duncan Sisters, Sally Rand, Jack Pearl, the Lane Sisters, Paul Haakon, and Ina Ray Hutton. He wrote the Broadway stage scores for "When We Were Forty-One", "Hip Hip Hooray", "The Merry-Go-Round", "School Days", "Ziegfeld Follies of 1910", "Sunbonnet Sue", and "Show Window". He founded the Gus Edwards Music Hall in New York, and also his own publishing company, then produced special subjects for films, and returned to vaudeville between 1930 and 1937, finally retiring in 1939. His chief musical collaborators included Edward Madden, Will Cobb, and Robert B. Smith. His other popular-song compositions include "Meet Me Under the Wisteria", "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", "I Can't Tell You Why I Love You but I Do", "Goodbye, Little Girl, Goodbye", "I Just Can't Make My Eyes Behave", "I'll Be With You When the Roses Bloom Again", "He's My Pal", "Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield", "In Zanzibar", "If a Girl Like You Loved a Boy Like Me", "Jimmy Valentine", "If I Were a Millionaire", and "Laddie Boy".