"Blue Moon"

By David "Chet" Williamson Sneade  

He was a songwriter’s best friend. Though not a tunesmith himself, Jack Robbins published many of the most popular songs of the 20^th century. 

Consider: “Blue Moon,” “Deep Purple,” “Don’t Blame Me,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Ebb Tide,” “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good,” “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,” and “Little Brown Jug." They are among the many songs from A-Z in his prodigious catalog of classics.

Robbins' birth is set at 1894. According to his obituary, which appeared on the front page of the December 17^th 1959 issue of Worcester Telegram & Gazette, he was "born in Worcester, son of the late Harris and Ida (Richmond) Robbins. He attended the old Ledge Street School [same school that Charlie Tobias attended] and Rindge School in Cambridge, Mass. His full name was Jacob J. Robbins.”

Ledge Street School, circa 1910

His friends called him Jack. It was a relative that invited him into the music business. “At the age of 17, he joined the music publishing firm of his uncle, Morris Richmond, in New York, starting as a stockroom clerk,” the T&G reported.  

Historically speaking, Robbins is seen as one of this nation’s original “song pluggers,” that is,  someone who actively finds ways to sell the sheet music. Robbins sang countless songs wherever he could find an audience, whether it was on street corners and private parties or department stores and movie houses.

Evidently, Robbins had an ear for talent and the golden touch when came to marketing. As the story goes, in the same year that he was hired to work in his uncle’s publishing firm, he found a song on the stockroom shelf that he recognized as a winner.

 

As the T&G tells it, the song, “Smiles,” written by J. Will Callahan and Lee Roberts, sold some two million copies in less than a year and earned Robbins a small fortune. “With the money from this venture, Mr. Robbins established his own firm, the Robbins Music Corp.”

According to the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, “Robbins was an astute assessor of talent, particularly that of band leaders who could produce and promote music. This attribute helped to jump-start the career of Paul Whiteman, among others, for Robbins encouraged Victor to sign the bandleader after he discovered him in 1926.

“Robbins understanding of the mechanisms of promotion and production led to the publication by his company of a handbook detailing the ins and outs of the business – inside stuff on How to Write Popular Songs, written by Variety’s music editor Abel Green.”

Another story of Robbins recognition of talent comes from the book, Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz by Stuart Nicholson. The author quotes manager and songwriter Teddy McRae, stating that Robbins had begun to follow the fortunes of the Chick Webb band, Ella’s bandleader and legal guardian. “Jack talked to me about a deal where he would support us with arrangements,” McRae said. “It was like song plugging …. So Jack said, ‘We’re going to give you hit songs [that] come out before anybody … because we feel Ella Fitzgerald is about the top thing right now. We think she’s really going to be tops.”

Young Ella Fitzgerald singing A-Tistket, A-Tasket from an early "soundie."

According to the T&G, two of Swing music’s top song writers, Harry Pierney and Walter Donaldson, “had their work published by Mr. Robbins…. “Others who were associated with Mr. Robbins were Peter DeRose, who wrote ‘Deep Purple,’ and Charles Tobias, another Worcester native, who wrote the lyrics to many songs composed by DeRose.”

Peter DeRose in front. Charles Tobias is 4th from left

Robbins published music during a time that is viewed as the golden age of sheet music. The Worcester publisher set a number of sales records for the period. For example, the tune, “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue,” was played and sung by countless people across the generations of the 20^th century. Today, many of these pieces are, as the T&G reported, "recognized classics of popular music in America.”

One of the more famous stories of the Robbins golden touch relates to the song, “Blue Moon,” written by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart. The song’s remarkable saga is conveyed on the official Hart website, lorenzhart.org. It was originally called, “Prayer,” and the first version was intended for Jean Harlow to be sung in the movie Hollywood Party. According to the Hart website, neither Miss Harlow nor “Prayer” appeared in the film.

“In its second life, the 'Prayer/Blue Moon' tune was given new lyrics and became the title song of the 1934 MGM film Manhattan Melodrama, which starred Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy, and was the movie that John Dillinger had been watching when he was gunned down outside the Biograph Theatre In Chicago."

The song had a third and fourth life in film as well. According to Gary Marmorstein, the author of Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and Its Makers 1900 to 1975, the fourth was a charm. “Metro’s music publisher Jack Robbins liked the tune but urged Hart to come up with a more popular lyric for it. Hart sarcastically suggested ‘Blue Moon,’ a counterclockwise turn of the old Tin Pan Alley June-moon-spoon cliché. That was precisely what Robbins wanted. The rest is pop music history.”

Ernö Rapée

By the late 1920s and early ‘30s, Robbins was making inroads into the film industry. At first, as reported by Continuum, while film was still silent, he published the work of composers of incidental music, including pieces by Ernö Rapée and Hugo Riesenfeld.

As the ‘talkies’ replaced silent pictures, Robbins was quick to recognize the new markets for songwriters, becoming one of the first music publishers to work out deals with Hollywood. One of his first projects was the 1929 musical, The Broadway Melody.

Along with a collection of publishing firms such as Leo Feist, and film companies, that included MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Robbins created the music publishing dynasty known as the Big Three Music Corporation.

“Hollywood so often found itself using his songs in its films that MGM bought his Big Three Music Corp,” to secure rights to the songs,” stated the T&G. “The movie Singing in the Rain borrowed its title from the popular song published by the Robbins firm.”

According to Continuum, Robbins was bought out of the business by the film studio in 1935. “Before the sale, Robbins had become angered by what he felt were the studio’s inefficient and ill-conceived efforts to promote his music. This resulted in a 1932 lawsuit against the studio and American Society of Composers and Publishers (ASCAP), which Robbins won; as a result he received more reasonable recompense for his material until the catalog was sold. Subsequently, he devoted his efforts to the jobbing and distribution of music,” Continuum reported. Ironically, Robbins became a future director of the American Society of Composer, Authors, and Publishers.

It was not until several years later that he would get back in the game by establishing a new company with his sons called J.J. Robbins Inc., which was best known for handling Broadway musical scores. He would also hold a share in Words & Music Inc., another music publishing house.

Ella singing with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Jack Robbins on the right. Photo by Herman Leonard 

Robbins died in New York in 1959 of a coronary thrombosis. He was 65. His son, Marshall and grandson Andrew continued in the music publishing business.

SIDE BAR
(First published in Western Front, newspaper covering Hollywood) 

-- Los ANGELES, CAL., May 9.—“An interesting interview with J. J. Robbins, head of the music publishing firm, Robbins Music Corp., New York, appeared recently in the Los Angeles Times, having been written by Edwin Schallert, conceded to be one of the outstanding music critics west of the Rockies. Mr. Robbins, whose firm is closely linked with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer organization, is an authority on music for the motion picture, and his views on this subject were greatly sought after by newspaper men on the occasion of his recent trip here.  

     Mr. Schallert spent considerable time with Mr. Robbins, and some of the highlights of his interview were as follows: "I talked to Jack Robbins, New York publisher of 'The Broadway Melody' numbers, the other day, and he declares that the popularity of the majority of songs is doubled as a result of pictures. In some instances it is more than doubled. Mr. Robbins mentioned that a number like 'You Were Meant For Me' would have sold probably 100,000 copies had it been written before song pictures came into vogue. As a part of a film musical production, it will sell "HITS"

    "There is another angle to the success of songs, as Robbins relates it, and that is the speed of the success. A picture is an 'immediate plug' for the song. It is more rapid than the radio even. In two or three weeks, with a generally released production, a tune will go round the country. It will hit more quickly and more certainly, because the audience sees as well as hears it sung. This result obtains naturally where the singer appears on the screen as in 'Broadway Melody.' "The song picture promises to cause a quickening in sheet music sales throughout the country. Popular music trade has been at a low ebb for some time. The public much prefers to buy the record, or listen to the number over the radio. Record sales will, of course, be stimulated, and sheet music also.”

* Note: Robbins was related to a couple of local jazz musicians. See: Jazzsphere (The Swinging Sheppard brothers) -- http://www.jazzhistorydatabase.com/blog-chet/?p=41

STANDARDS

Deep Purple – Artie Shaw & Helen Forrest -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwtFcr7E0O8

Don’t Blame Me --  Jackie McLean -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwtFcr7E0O8

Ebb Tide – Arthur Prysock -- 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6w58QvLn1M

I Fall in Love Too Easily – Chet Baker – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zrSoHgAAWo

I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good --  Nina Simone --  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceOIffP8kio

 

POPULAR

A-Tisket A-Tasket –Ella Fitzgerld --   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUYpUogn91U

Blue Moon – sung by the Marcels -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0fy1HeJv80

I’m Always Chasing Rainbows -- Judy Garland --  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vePA4puzc8U

Alfalfa singing with the Little Rascals

I’m in the Mood for Love -- Alfalfa -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuOsB4psC9E

Little Brown Jug -- Glenn Miller -- 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOG89TrL4Vk

Peg ‘O My Heart -- The Harmonicats -- 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BIuX7IsdE8

Stairway to the Stars -- Johnny Hartman --  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfp04S8QrAk

Three Coins in the Fountain -- Dean Martin -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YxRNdgY5vg

At Sundown -- Doris Day -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEw2b3EajfA

RECOMMENDED

Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me – sung by Louis Armstrong, with Duke Ellington -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djv09UNjjSY

Elmer’s Tune -- Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmM0_Ilaww8

Everything I Have Is Yours -- Billy Ekstine -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZSirka0-U

Something’s Gotta Give -- Fred Astaire -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoQzCCDSZX0

Temptation -- Mark Sandman and the Either Orchestra -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spNffzYNWQE

That Lucky Old Sun -- Louis Armstrong -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYMtw8AhJ60

A select catalog of songs: A-Tisket A Tasket (Ella Fitzgerald & Al Feldman), Alice Blue Gown (Harry Tierney and Joseph McCarthy), Anchors Aweigh (A.H. Miles & Charles Zimmerman), Angel (Mitchell Parrish & Peter DeRose), At Sundown (Walter Donaldson), Back Bay (Vernon Duke), Blue Moon (Richard Rogers & Lorenz Hart), Blue Sentimental Mood (DeRose, Teddy Powell & Leonard Whitcup), Coming in On A Wing and A Prayer (Harold Adamson & Jimmy McHugh), Darktown Strutter’s Ball (Shelton Brooks), Deep Purple (Peter DeRose), Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me (Duke Ellington & Bob Russell), Don’t Blame Me (Dorothy Fields & Jimmy McHugh), Don’t Get Around Much Anymore (Duke Ellington & Bob Russell), Ebb Tide (Carl Sigman & Robert Maxwell), Elmer’s Tune (Elmer Albercht, Sammy Gallup, & Dick Jurgens), Everything I Have is Yours (Harold Adamson and Burton Lane), Has the Nightingale Told You (Parrish & DeRose), I Fall in Love Too Easily (Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne), I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good (Ellington & Russell), I’m Always Chasing Rainbows (Harry Carroll & Joseph McCarthy), I’m in the Mood for Love (Dorothy Fields & Jimmy McHugh), It’s a Wonderful World (Harold Adamson, Jan Savitt & Johnny Watson), Jumpin’ for Joy (Teddy Wilson & Edgar Sampson), Just Friends (Sam Lewis & John Klenner), Little Brown Jug (Jack Lawrence), Love is All (Harry Tobias & Pinky Tomlin), Maybe (Allan Flynn & Frank Madden), Pagan Love Song (Arthur Freed and Nacio Brown), Peg ‘O My Heart (Alfred Bryan & Fred Fisher), Society Conga (Xavier Cugat), Something’s Gotta Give (Johnny Mercer), Somewhere, My Love (Paul Francis Webster & Maurice Jarre), Stairway to the Stars (Mitchell Parrish, Matt Malneck, Frank Signorelli), Temptation (Herb Nacio Brown & Arthur Freed), That Lucky Old Sun (Haven Gillespie & Beasley Smith), Three Coins in the Fountain (Sammy Cahn & Jule Styne), Whatever You Say, Will Be Held Against You (Herb Adamson), You Are My Lucky Star (Brown & Freed),

Jack Robbins in white. Harry Warren at the piano

John Jacob “Jack” Robbins

DOB: September 15, 1894

DOD: December 15, 1959

Jack Robbins stands to the left of the piano player

This is a work in progress. Comments, corrections, and suggestions are always welcome. Also see: www.jazzriffing.blogspot.com

Resources

http://books.google.com/books?id=fCgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=Jack+Robbins+song+publisher&source=bl&ots=4Q3t3l9iYK&sig=-XDyJnJLBDj5BppLeBXg-AD7hCA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fFr5UPP7NY7V0gG0goCgAw&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Jack%20Robbins%20song%20publisher&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=5DOHMWBHd_IC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=Jack+Robbins+and+Bing+Crosby&source=bl&ots=tmkvVgoW-h&sig=sk58UjMpQyO0CTs44tX5KYFtAmY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=78H6UKXeBof00QHSuYGYBw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Jack%20Robbins%20and%20Bing%20Crosby&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=Hx8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=Jack+Robbins+music+publisher&source=bl&ots=_kDJhAwK1B&sig=ocuibOivyjT8uk2BVjFaw6-KO5g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PoD5UJqMIuPA0AHwn4HQCQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=Jack%20Robbins%20music%20publisher&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=3xkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT22&dq=Robbins+Music+Catalog&hl=en&sa=X&ei=v3P5UOSOLo7A9gT964CgBg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAzgo

http://2011expo.ascap.com/Andrew.Robbins

http://books.google.com/books?id=7JZQAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA6-PA40&lpg=RA6-PA40&dq=Jack+Robbins+music+publisher&source=bl&ots=8Jqu4P5PMb&sig=JyvxIRYhw4mrgUqsWYF2yNmdAWE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=En_5UKSGJMe80AGQuYHYAQ&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=Jack%20Robbins%20music%20publisher&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=QAwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT18&dq=Robbins+Music+Catalog&hl=en&sa=X&ei=v3P5UOSOLo7A9gT964CgBg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwADgo

http://books.google.com/books?id=MRt-5GuyqMkC&pg=PT215&lpg=PT215&dq=Publisher+Jack+Robbins+born&source=bl&ots=WW9JTV2YoO&sig=fkdg3dHWXN7gB03ReeAu-TUDOOQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1Vz5UNDcEcrL0QGrtICoAw&ved=0CGEQ6AEwBw

http://www.amica.org/Live/Organization/Honor-Roll/Alter.htm

http://rholmes.myweb.uga.edu/ellington-bio.htm

http://www.mcfc.co.uk/news/features/2011/march/blue-moon-the-history

http://books.google.com/books?id=J3hKik-5AjIC&pg=PA48&dq=Jack+Robbins+biography&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_2n5UNTYM87w0QG1z4DYCQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Jack%20Robbins%20biography&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=J3hKik-5AjIC&pg=PA48&dq=Jack+Robbins+biography&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_2n5UNTYM87w0QG1z4DYCQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Jack%20Robbins%20biography&f=false