Jack Lawrence



Jack Lawrence (April 7, 1912 – March 16, 2009) was an American songwriter. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975.

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One of Jack Lawrence's first major songs after leaving the service was "Yes, My Darling Daughter", introduced by Dinah Shore on Eddie Cantor's radio program. The song was Shore's first record. While Frank Sinatra was already a well-known big band singer, Lawrence's "All or Nothing at All" was Sinatra's first solo hit.

His song, "If I Didn't Care", introduced the world to the 1950's Rock-n-Roll group The Ink Spots.

In 1946, Lawrence published a song he had written during his tour of duty in World War II. It was released in February 1947 and eventually spent 2 weeks at #1. He wrote it for the then-five-year-old daughter of his attorney, Lee Eastman: Linda Eastman McCartney, future first wife of Beatle Paul McCartney. The name of the song was "Linda".

Lawrence also wrote the lyrics for "Tenderly", Rosemary Clooney's trademark song (in collaboration with composer Walter Gross, as well as the English language lyric to "Beyond the Sea" (based on Charles Trenet's French language song "La mer"), the trademark song for Bobby Darin. Another French song for which Lawrence wrote an English lyric was "La Goualante de Pauvre Jean", becoming "The Poor People of Paris".

Together with Richard Myers he wrote "Hold My Hand", which was featured in the film Susan Slept Here and nominated for the 1954 Academy Award for Best Song.

Jack Lawrence also wrote the lyrics to: " Sleepy Lagoon " a popular hit by the Platters. The music to " Sleepy Lagoon " was written by Eric Coates in 1940. It was originally a hit for Harry James and his Orchestra in the early 1940s.

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Jack Lawrence was born Jacob Louis Schwartz in Brooklyn, New York City to an Orthodox Jewish family of modest means as the third of four sons. His parents Barney (Beryl) Schwartz and Fanny (Fruma) Goldman Schwartz were first cousins who had run away from their home in Belaya Tserkov (Bila Tserkva, Ukraine) to come to America in 1904.

Lawrence wrote songs while still a child, but because of parental pressure after he graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School, he enrolled in the First Institute of Podiatry where he received a doctoral degree in 1932. The same year, his first song was published and he immediately decided to make a career of songwriting rather than podiatry. That song, "Play, Fiddle, Play (Song)", won international fame. He became a member of ASCAP that year at the age of 20.

In the 1930s he had a hit "With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair with composer Clara Edwards that became a frequent jazz standard over the subsequent decades.

In the early 1940s Lawrence and several fellow hit makers formed a sensational review called "Songwriters on Parade", performing all across the Eastern seaboard on the Loew's and Keith circuits.

Lawrence joined the United States Maritime Service during World War II and wrote the official song of the Maritime Service and Merchant Marine, "Heave Ho! My Lads, Heave Ho!" as a lieutenant in 1943, while bandleader at Sheepshead Bay Maritime Service Training Station in New York.

Lawrence died on March 16, 2009 at age 96 after a |fall in his home in Redding, Connecticut.

Work on Broadway

 * Follow Thru (1929) &mdash; musical; actor for the role of "Country Club Boy"
 * Courtin' Time (1951) &mdash; musical; co-composer and co-lyricist with Don Walker
 * Ziegfeld Follies of 1957 (1957) &mdash; revue; featured lyricist for "Bring on the Girls" and "Music for Madame"
 * Maybe Tuesday (1958) &mdash; play; co-producer
 * I Had a Ball (1964) &mdash; musical; co-composer and co-lyricist
 * Lena Horne: "The Lady and Her Music" (1981) &mdash; concert; co-producer
 * Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) &mdash; play; co-producer
 * The Golden Age (1984) &mdash; play; owner of the Jack Lawrence Theatre (formerly the Playhouse Theatre)
 * Quilters (1984) &mdash; musical; owner of the Jack Lawrence Theatre
 * So Long on Lonely Street (1986) &mdash; play; owner of the Jack Lawrence Theatre