Sam M Lewis (1885-1959) was a New York born lyricist, whose first hit song came in 1912 – ‘That Mellow Melody’. Four years later he teamed up with another lyricist Joe Young, and together the Tin Pan Alley duo penned a string of hits until 1930. Lewis and Young worked with many composers, including Fred Ahlert, Harry Akst, Walter Donaldson, Ray Henderson, George Meyer and Jean Schwartz. Some of their songs made their way into stage musicals like Sinbad, Bombo and Kid Boots, and with the advent of ‘talking pictures’ in the late 1920s, their collaboration with Donaldson ‘My Mammy’ was immortalised by Al Jolson in the ground-, or rather sound-breaking, film The Jazz Singer of 1927. Their other successes included ‘Rock-a-bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody’ (1918), ‘How Ya Gonna Keep Em Down on the Farm?’ (1919), ‘Has Anybody Seen My Gal?’ (AKA ‘Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue’), ‘Dinah’, ‘I’m Sitting on Top of the World’ (all 1925), ‘In a Little Spanish Town’, (1926) and ‘Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder’ (1930).
In 1931 Lewis wrote ’Just Friends’ with John Klenner, ‘Street of Dreams’ in 1932 with Victor Young and ‘For All We Know’ in 1934 with J Fred Coots. In 1936 he wrote English lyrics for Rezso Seress’ controversial ‘Gloomy Sunday’, notoriously known as “the Hungarian suicide song” due to the rumour that many people ended their lives under its melancholy influence. The song was about a lover contemplating suicide in order to be reunited with his dead sweetheart. Lewis’ English language version was originally recorded in 1936 with vocals by Bob Allen, while in 1941, Billie Holiday recorded her own interpretation which became popular, despite the fact that many radio stations would not play the song, as it was deemed too depressing. Lewis continued writing into the 1940s, but his final hit was ‘The Last Two Weeks in July’ With Abel Baer (1939).
Key Songs:
- Dinah (1925)
- Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue
- For All We Know
- Gloomy Sunday
- I’m Sitting On Top Of The World
- Just Friends
- My Mammy
- Street Of Dreams