Joseph E. Howard

Biography

Joseph Edgar Howard was crooning for coins in vaudeville while still in short pants—an eleven-year-old boy soprano whose voice carried him straight into a cross-country tour of “Little Eva.” The footlights never let him go. By the turn of the century he had traded the high C’s for baton and pen, stitching together the scores that lit up Broadway and Chicago: “The Land of Nod,” “The Time, the Place and the Girl,” “The Girl Question,” “A Stubborn Cinderella,” “The Goddess of Liberty,” and “The Prince of Tonight”—shows he not only wrote but also produced and directed, juggling scripts, cues, and curtain calls as easily as lyrics. Midnight found him just as busy, holding court in cafés, on theatre stages, over the crackle of radio valves, and later inside the flicker of television tubes. ASCAP welcomed him in 1921, and for the next four decades his name rolled down Tin Pan Alley playlists beside those of Frank Adams, Will Hough, and Harold Orlob. Together they spun melodies that refused to leave the public’s lips: “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” “Hello, My Baby,” “Goodbye, My Lady Love,” “Can’t Get You Out of My Mind,” “Somewhere in France Is the Lily,” “Love Me Little, Love Me Long,” “Montana,” “Silver in Your Hair,” “On the Boulevard,” “San Francisco Frizz,” “An Echo of Her Smile,” “I Don’t Like Your Family,” “Blow the Smoke Away,” “What’s the Use of Dreaming?,” “Honeymoon,” “When You First Kiss the Last Girl You Love,” “Be Sweet to Me, Kid,” “Tonight Will Never Come Again,” and “Cross Your Heart.” Each tune a postcard from an era when a catchy chorus could own the world.