Peter DeRose

Peter DeRose (* 10. March 1900 in New York ; † 23. April 1953 ) was an American jazz - composer and songwriter during the Tin Pan Alley era. He was inducted into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame .

Career

DeRose showed great interest in music as a child. He learned to play the piano from an older sister and published his first own work at the age of 18. After graduating from high school , he first worked as an employee in a music store. In 1920 he found a job in the New York office of the Italian music publisher G. Ricordi & Co. with his very successful composition “When You're Gone, I Won't Forget” .

In 1923 he met the ukulele player May Singhi Breen (1895-1970), who appeared on the radio with the female ukulele group "Syncopators". A love affair developed between the two of them, and she left the group to perform with DeRose on an NBC music radio show called "Sweethearts of the Air," with DeRose playing the piano and she playing the ukulele. The popular radio show of the two artists, who soon married, ran for 16 years. The show not only enabled them to prosper, but also gave DeRose the opportunity to showcase many of his compositions.

DeRose worked with many well-known copywriters such as Charles Tobias , Al Stillman , Carl Sigman and Billy Hill . Some of DeRose's best known works are:

• Somebody Loves You (1932) - piano piece with text recorded by Eddy Arnold in 1966;
• Wagon Wheels (1934) - song for a Broadway musical , played by the Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 and covered by singers such as Bing Crosby and Paul Robeson ;
• When the Deep Purple Falls (1934) [1] - recorded a. a. by Nino Tempo and April Stevens , later by Donny and Marie Osmond ;
• Rain (1934) - sung by Ella Fitzgerald ;
• "(Buonasera Signorina) Buona Sera (Good Night)" Music by Peter DeRose and lyrics by Carl Sigman . Set to music for the first time in 1950 by Mercury Records , sung by Louis Prima and Keely Smith & Chours, in 1958 also by Dean Martin , Adriano Celentano , and others. v. a.)
• Have You Ever Been Lonely? (1934) - Original hit for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, also recorded by Teresa Brewer in 1960, Patsy Cline in 1961 and Jim Reeves in 1962;
• On a Little Street in Singapore (1938) - for Harry James and Frank Sinatra ;
• A Marshmallow World (1949) - a Christmas song recorded by several artists including 1963 by Johnny Mathis , Dean Martin Christmas Album in 1966 and Kim Stockwood 1999th

Peter DeRose's music has been covered by many artists including John Coltrane , Spike Jones , Art Tatum , Les McCann and Peggy Lee . In addition to performing music for Wagon Wheels , Peter DeRose wrote songs for the Broadway musicals Yes Yes Yvette and Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1928 . Together with Bert Shefter and Mitchell Parish , he wrote The Lamp Is Low in 1930 .

The most famous of his songs, When the Deep Purple Falls , also inspired the rock group " Deep Purple ", which made the short form of the song title their band name. The song was composed as a piano piece in 1934 and text was provided a few years later by Mitchell Parish. It was the top hit for Larry Clinton & His Orchestra in 1939 and Artie Shaw with Helen Forrest , Duke Ellington , Glen Miller and Sarah Vaughan also recorded versions of the song. In 1957, it was a No. 20 hit for Billy Ward & The Dominoes and in 1963 a No. 1 hit on the Top Hundred Billboard Magazine's Billboard Magazine in the United States for Nino Tempo & April Stevens . It became popular again in 1976 as a duet by Donny and Marie Osmond .

In 1932 Peter DeRose wrote music with radio star Phillips H. Lord for one of Lord's religious "Seth Parker" music books. DeRose composed music for the Ice Capades show in 1941 . He wrote songs for several Hollywood films in the 1940s and early 1950s .

Peter DeRose's last hit was You Can Do It , which he wrote shortly before his death in 1953. He was buried in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla , where his gravestone bears the words "Every friend he ever made, he kept". (He kept every friend he made.)

In 1970 Peter DeRose was inducted into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame .

Web links

• DeRose sheet music collection
• Peter DeRose at Allmusic (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 1950 - Buona sera (Good Night) by Louis Prima and His Orchestra
2. ↑ SecondHandSongs - Buona sera (Good Night)