WALTER DONALDSON BIOGRAPHY
THE MAN
BEHIND THE
MUSIC
One of eleven children in a music-loving family, the songwriting talents of Brooklyn-born Walter Donaldson bloomed under the watch of his classically trained mother, an organist at the local parish. After writing songs for school productions in his boyhood and demonstrating sheet music in five and ten cent stores in his early teens, young Walter took on work as a pianist at a Brighton Beach hotel and local nickelodeons before graduating to a role as a staff pianist at a music publishing firm on Tin Pan Alley. Walter Donaldson had found his calling…
EARLY YEARS
Donaldson became an officially published songwriter in 1915 at the age of 22, and his first three songs became big hits.
He sold close to 8 million copies of sheet music for: “We’ll Have A Jubilee In My Old Kentucky Home,” “Just Try To Picture Me Back Home In Tennessee,” and “You’ll Never Know That Old Home Town Of Mine,“ the latter two introduced by Al Jolson and renowned vaudevillians Van & Schenck, respectively. The hits kept coming, and his songs became regular features in Vaudeville and other shows. After enlisting in the war effort, Donaldson frequently entertained the troops and often played at War Bond Rallies. At the end of World War I, Donaldson captured the zeitgeist of the times with the uproarious, irreverent “HowYa Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?),” an enduring ditty introduced at the Victory Parade by Lt. James Reese Europe and the Harlem Hellfighters Regiment and so prescient it became a constant refrain for troops sent overseas during the next World War over two decades later.
From his earliest days as a songwriter up until the time he launched his own publishing company in 1928, Donaldsons' songs would be published by a total of eighteen different music publishers*, and another 1919 composition – this one a ballad published by Irving Berlin – would go on to have an equally enduring legacy as “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down On The Farm.”
First introduced by vaudevillian William Frawley (later known as Fred on I Love Lucy), “My Mammy” caught the ear of Al Jolson, who promptly incorporated the song into his long-running Broadway show, Sinbad, before performing it in the landmark The Jazz Singer, history’s first-ever talkie. Artists throughout the years such as Judy Garland, Eddie Fisher, Jimmy Roselli, Liza Minnelli, Cher and U2 incorporated the song into their sets and recordings.
*In time, all but a handful of songs that Donaldson wrote came under the Donaldson Publishing Co. domain.
ROARING
TWENTIES
Already considered a prolific composer by 1920 with some 70 songs to his name after just five years in the business, Donaldson’s output exploded when the clock struck the Roaring Twenties. While continuing to write lyrics himself plus team up with other lyricists like Sam Lewis & Joe Young, Grant Clarke, Howard Johnson, George Whiting, and Billy Rose throughout the Jazz Age, Donaldson began a long and fruitful collaboration with close friend Gus Kahn in 1922. The duo started kicking out an impressive string of hits that included “My Buddy,” ”Carolina In The Morning,” and “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” ultimately pairing up to write the score for the 1928 Ziegfeld smash hit, Whoopee, featuring the classics “Makin’ Whoopee” and “Love Me Or Leave Me.”
Newlyweds Walter and Dorothy Donaldson at the Hollywood premiere of The Great Ziegfeld, which earned three Oscars, including Best Picture. A former Ziegfeld Girl (stage name: Walda Mansfield), ”Wally” bore the bon vivant two daughters, Sheila and Ellen, who were raised in L.A
HOLLYWOOD
YEARS
At the onset of the Depression in 1929, Walter Donaldson left for Hollywood where Samuel Goldwyn and Florenz Ziegfeld were producing the film version of Whoopee.
He and lyricist Gus Kahn added a couple new songs to the score, including “My Baby Just Cares For Me” which helped make Eddie Cantor a movie star. Whoopee! also launched the film careers of other Hollywood greats Busby Berkeley, Gregg Toland, Alfred Newman, Paulette Goddard, and Betty Grable. For the next 15 years, Donaldson made prominent contributions to a number of studio films, including one (“Did I Remember” from Suzy, starring Cary Grant and Jean Harlow) which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Song in 1936. It was a busy year for Donaldson, who had songs in five other MGM films, including the groundbreaking and wildly successful The Great Ziegfeld.
In addition to his work in motion pictures, the 30s saw evolutions in Donaldson’s music that were likely a result of the move to Hollywood, tragedies big and small (the Great Depression and the death of his own twin brother, Arthur), and also falling in love for the first time in a long, long time – there is evidence to suggest that his last serious relationship ended all the way back in 1922 after his fiancée passed away, a personal loss that served as the inspiration for “My Buddy.” The birth of his two daughters, Sheila and Ellen, also delighted him to no end, and he went to great lengths to shower them both with love, brazenly sending them large bouquets of flowers while they were in class at grade school. All this to say that Donaldson’s music changed considerably out west. A deeply sensitive man, his music and lyrics always reflected the extraordinary times in which he lived and worked, the people and places he loved.
UNKNOWN
TREASURES
In the late 1980s, Donaldson’s ailing widow, Wally, pulled out a small box that had been buried deep in her closet for many decades, handing it to Ellen, who opened it up to discover a handwritten list of previously unknown songs that had lain dormant since they were written in the 30s and 40s, unpublished and unrecorded. The list sparked Ellen’s own quixotic hunt for what would end up being a wealth of original material, prompting jazz great Benny Carter to introduce her to esteemed arranger/conductor Lon Norman, who recorded many of the songs, in part just so that the family could hear them for the first time.
The results opened up a whole new window into Donaldson’s music, filled with increasingly sophisticated song structures and worldly textures, from exotic Latin rhythms to Celtic melodies and Appalachian bluegrass. As Norman made his way through the piles of unknown, mostly handwritten music, he observed, “By seeing how he moves the notes, you understand how he thinks. His musical fingerprints are all over everything…”
THE WAR YEARS
Never without his notebook and stubby little pencil, Donaldson continued to write day and night into the mid-40s.
Music was the constant in a world that was filled with uncertainty and suddenly at war again. Throughout the war years Donaldson was active in the USO, often entertaining troops at the Hollywood Canteen and at various Allied Resistance benefits. Always hospitable, known for his material and emotional generosity, he and his family regularly opened their Santa Monica home to servicemen and women who were on leave.
Toward the end of the war, the bon vivant who had always lived life to the fullest was suddenly besieged by health problems – all the fun and good times were finally taking toll. (Of all the ironic song titles he came up with, “Don’t Do Anything I Wouldn’t Do” certainly takes the cake.) Seriously ill and dispirited, Donaldson’s brilliant, colorful career was cut short when he died in 1947 at the age of 54.
A CONTINUING
LEGACY
Stay up-to-date on Donaldson Publishing as they embark on a series of collaborations with contemporary artists and producers on covers, remixes, samples and interpolations of songs written by Walter Donaldson.
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