The Vamp
Byron Gay
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Browse piano sheets by Byron Gay on Zen Virtual Piano. The American songwriter Byron Sturges Gay was born on 28 August 1886 and died on 22 December 1945. Four or Five Times, which he wrote with Marco H. Hellman, counts among his best-known songs and was recorded by many artists, among them King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee. RagPiano calls him a multi-faceted individual: composer, lyricist, performing musician, author and even an explorer at one point. A song recorded by performers as different as King Oliver and Peggy Lee suggests a tune that many musicians wanted to play. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1909, then moved to Los Angeles, where, according to the 1910 census, he began his musical career as a piano salesman. The year 1919 brought two of his biggest hits, The Vamp and Oh!; the second, written with Arnold Johnson, is noted for having the shortest title of any popular song to date. The Vamp, intended as an Oriental number, became a big hit in vaudeville houses as a dance number after its introduction in the Greenwich Village Follies of 1919. An introduction at the Greenwich Village Follies followed by success in vaudeville houses suggests how a stage could carry a song into wider circulation. A Naval Academy graduate who became a piano salesman and then wrote a dance hit called The Vamp can be read as a career that kept changing direction. In Manhattan he helped form the Sunshine Publishing Company and became its initial director, and for the Hearst newspapers he turned out a music-and-cartoon series, the Dippie Ditties, with at least fourteen installments from late 1917 into 1918. A statement quoted by RagPiano said he found much of his inspiration touring the country in a specially equipped camping car. Perhaps a touring camping car and a newspaper series that paired music with cartoons hint at a songwriter whose work reached readers as well as listeners. He joined ASCAP in 1922, the year Fate became a hit through performances by Ted Lewis in the Greenwich Village Follies on Broadway. In 1924 he organized a Symphonic Dance Orchestra in Los Angeles, with the arranger Arthur Lange among those working with him. In 1933 he joined a scantly funded volunteer expedition that left Boston by ship in October and went through the Panama Canal to New Zealand and on to the Ross Ice Shelf. From Annapolis to the Ross Ice Shelf, a life that crossed songwriting, publishing and exploration seems to resist a single label.
Browse piano sheets by Byron Gay on Zen Virtual Piano.
The American songwriter Byron Sturges Gay was born on 28 August 1886 and died on 22 December 1945. Four or Five Times, which he wrote with Marco H. Hellman, counts among his best-known songs and was recorded by many artists, among them King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee. RagPiano calls him a multi-faceted individual: composer, lyricist, performing musician, author and even an explorer at one point. A song recorded by performers as different as King Oliver and Peggy Lee suggests a tune that many musicians wanted to play.
He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1909, then moved to Los Angeles, where, according to the 1910 census, he began his musical career as a piano salesman. The year 1919 brought two of his biggest hits, The Vamp and Oh!; the second, written with Arnold Johnson, is noted for having the shortest title of any popular song to date. The Vamp, intended as an Oriental number, became a big hit in vaudeville houses as a dance number after its introduction in the Greenwich Village Follies of 1919. An introduction at the Greenwich Village Follies followed by success in vaudeville houses suggests how a stage could carry a song into wider circulation. A Naval Academy graduate who became a piano salesman and then wrote a dance hit called The Vamp can be read as a career that kept changing direction.
In Manhattan he helped form the Sunshine Publishing Company and became its initial director, and for the Hearst newspapers he turned out a music-and-cartoon series, the Dippie Ditties, with at least fourteen installments from late 1917 into 1918. A statement quoted by RagPiano said he found much of his inspiration touring the country in a specially equipped camping car. Perhaps a touring camping car and a newspaper series that paired music with cartoons hint at a songwriter whose work reached readers as well as listeners.
He joined ASCAP in 1922, the year Fate became a hit through performances by Ted Lewis in the Greenwich Village Follies on Broadway. In 1924 he organized a Symphonic Dance Orchestra in Los Angeles, with the arranger Arthur Lange among those working with him. In 1933 he joined a scantly funded volunteer expedition that left Boston by ship in October and went through the Panama Canal to New Zealand and on to the Ross Ice Shelf. From Annapolis to the Ross Ice Shelf, a life that crossed songwriting, publishing and exploration seems to resist a single label.
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Byron Gay
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Byron Sturges Gay (1886–1945) was an American songwriter, also a lyricist, performing musician, author and, at one point, an explorer.
His songs include Four or Five Times, co-written with Marco H. Hellman, and, from 1919, The Vamp and Oh!, the latter written with Arnold Johnson.
He helped form the Sunshine Publishing Company in Manhattan, organized a Symphonic Dance Orchestra in Los Angeles, and joined a volunteer expedition in 1933 that sailed to New Zealand and the Ross Ice Shelf.