Melville J. Gideon

Melville Joseph Gideon (born May 21, 1884 in New York City , † November 11, 1933 in London ) was an American composer , singer and pianist .

Life

Melville J. Gideon was apparently first presented as a child prodigy and performed with the New York Philharmonic at the age of twelve . He was initially active in the USA as an adult and devoted himself to current issues, such as taxi driving, which, according to Graham Russell Hodges in his Social History of New York Taxi Drivers, became “synonymous with a new urban culture” at the beginning of the 20th century. As an expression of this mood, Hodges quotes an extensive excerpt from Gideon's Take me 'round, which was part of the Ziegfeld Follies in 1908 . In 1909 Gideon composed one of the Billiken songs that apparently came on the market at the same time as the first Billiken figures.

In 1911 Gideon moved to London and initially performed in the Alhambra with a ragtime program. There it was not consistently received with enthusiasm: In an article Ragtime. The author Francis Toye concluded The New Tarantism in 1913 with the following sentence: “[…] persuade Parliament to deport Messrs. Hirsch and Melville Gideon […] as highly undesirable aliens, before this unhappy country should be converted into an even larger lunatic asylum than it is at present. ”Nevertheless, he was very sought after in London in his early days, especially when the dispute between Charles B. Cochran and André Charlot developed. He was on Charlot's Kill That Fly! involved, played an important role in Cole Porter's career and developed a style as a singer at the piano that was similar to that of cowards .

In 1913 newspaper reports revealed that Gideon had suffered significant financial losses in London and was insolvent. In 1914 it was publicly announced that he was making about £ 7,000 a year from his music, but had lost about £ 10,000 playing games since June 1912.

During the First World War , Melville J. Gideon apparently also appeared in events for the benefit of war wounded.

In the 1920s he made numerous recordings with Melville J. Gideon. In 1928 he brought out the musical The Optimists at the Casino de Paris in New York . 24 performances took place. In the same year, he received rather benevolent reviews for the recording of My Heart Stood Still and The Hours I Spent with You . The 1929 recording of Roses of Yesterday and For Old Time's Sake was also received somewhat graciously. In 1931 he was hired with his band, with which he played at the Dorchester House Hotel, to represent the Saturday night recordings of Ambrose and His Band, but these radio programs met with little approval. One critic wrote that he hadn't exactly set the Thames on fire, but criticized the readers' letters, some of which were apparently quite malicious.

In 1929 Gideon was seen in the film The Co-Optimists . The musical was first performed in London in 1921 and had reached 500 performances. In 1926 recordings by the Co-Optimists were released. In 1933, he played himself in the film Her First Affair .

Works

Source:

• Oh! That Yankiana Rag (1906)
• Yankiana-Rag (1906)
• Gee! Ain't I Glad I'm Single (1908)
• Have You Seen My Puss Cat? (1908)
• You kid! (1908)
• Take me 'round in a taxi cab (1908)
• The Billiken Man (1909)
• Ragtime Land (1909)
• Baby Face (1910)
• Lovers Lane (1910)
• Rahnee (1910)
• When Rosalie Sings 'ciribiribi' (1910)
• I'd Like to Spend a Honeymoon With You (1910)
• Mammy's Shufflin 'Dance (1911)
• Alone with You (1918, with Cole Porter )
• There's a Girl in Chateau Thierry (1919)
• Faust on Toast (1920, with Willie Redstone )
• I Never Realized (1921)
• Burnt Sugar (1922)
• Stealing thro '(1931)
• Ragtime Table D'hote (?)

Web links

• photo
• Gideon sings and plays I Wish I Knew ...

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Graham Russell Hodges: Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press 2007, ISBN 978-0801885549 , p. 24.
2. ↑ Quoted from: Karl Koenig: Jazz in Print (1856–1929). An Anthology of Selected Early Readings in Jazz History. An Anthology of Early Source Readings in Jazz History. Pendragon Press 2002, ISBN 978-1576470244 , p. 96.
3. ↑ Clive Barker (Ed.): New Theater Quarterly 30. Volume 8, Part 2. V. 8. Cambridge University Press 1992, ISBN 978-0521429412 , pp. 115 ff.
4. ↑ http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP19131231.2.40&l=mi&e=-------10--511----0maybrick--
5. ↑ http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/10358208
6. ↑ http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=PBH19140216.2.108
7. ↑ http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C1EFD345F13738DDDA80B94DA415B838DF1D3
8. ↑ http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1916/1916%20-%200452.html
9. ↑ http://www.ibdb.com/show.php?ID=6814
10. ↑ http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/April%201928/25/771285/MISCELLANEOUS+VOCAL+RECORDS  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ http://www.gramophone.net/Issue/Page/May%201929/25/788730/MISCELLANEOUS+VOCAL+RECORDS  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
12. ↑ http://www.mgthomas.co.uk/dancebands/indexpages/LondonDancePlaces.htm
13. ↑ The substitute — and what the fans thought ( Memento from September 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
14. ↑ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45yAXtBkwv0
15. ^ Stanley Green: Encyclopedia of the Musical Theater. An Updated Reference Guide to Over 2000 Performers, Writers, Directors, Productions, and Songs of the Musical. New York and London (Da Capo Paperback) 1980, ISBN 978-0306801136 , p. 85.
16. ↑ http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_c/cooptimists.htm
17. ↑ http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&d=EP19260327.2.138
18. ↑ http://people.theiapolis.com/actor-HAMC/melville-gideon/
19. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated April 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
20. ↑ http://www.sondheimguide.com/porter/miscsongs.html
21. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
22. ^ Library of Congress, Copyright Office: Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 3. Musical Compositions. NS Vol. 26, Part 1, First Half of 1931, p. 535.