Joseph E Howard

Biography

Joseph Howard was born on February 12, 1878 in New York City. He toured in a stock company production of "Little Eva," then performed in vaudeville as a boy soprano at the age of 11. He was married to singer actress Mabel Barrison, who died in 1912.

At 17, he met a young singer named Ida Emerson who would become his second wife. They played the Midwestern vaudeville circuit, drawing notice enough in Chicago to obtain an engagement in New York at Tony Pastor's Music Hall on 14th Street, where they were a bit hit in 1898. Their fortunes improved in 1899 when they wrote the song "Hello! Ma Baby," which became one of the most popular songs of its day, selling over a million copies of the sheet music, the predominant way of making money from music prior to recordings, in just a few months. They found themselves space at the famed Tin Pan Alley where they continued to write songs for vaudeville. They penned another hit, "Goodbye, My Lady Love," in 1904. They moved back to Chicago, where Howard performed and composed his tunes, and produced some of the biggest Chicago musical hit shows from 1905 to 1915.

Howard produced a string of pop jazz hits, including "What's the Use of Dreaming?," "I Don't Like Your Family," and "A Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother". The tunes that he is most often associated with in modern times are "Hello! Ma Baby" and "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now". The latter was a jilted man's waltz that made its debut in the 1909 Broadway musical The Prince of To-Night and became the subject of controversy many years later when one of Howard's employees, a composer, sued and won the right to remove Howard's name from the piece as its primary composer.

Howard performed in nightclubs, theaters, radio and television throughout his career. His writing slacked off between 1915 and 1939, then picked up again.

In 1939, Howard collaborated with Beatrice Kay, a husky-voiced showgirl, on a radio program called Gay Nineties, which revisited his hits from the turn of the century and the teens, which by then had become nostalgic American entertainment for listeners during the Big Band Era.

He made recordings for the Decca and Vocalion labels in the late 1940s.

In 1947, a motion picture was produced based on Howard's biography called I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now, starring Mark Stevens, with Buddy Clark taking on the singing chores. The film generated legal controversy when a former employee sued, proved his authorship of the composition, and won the right to remove Howard's name from the song.

Howard hosted the early live television series The Gay Nineties Revue (ABC, 1948–1949).

In the late 1950s, he published an autobiography entitled Gay Nineties Troubadour.

Howard died on stage in Chicago while singing "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" during a curtain call on May 19, 1961.

Legal controversy

After the release of the movie I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now, Harold Orlob sued Howard, claiming that he had penned the tune when he worked for Howard in Chicago as a writer of additional songs for the musical The Prince of To-Night (1909). Orlob won his suit, which sought no compensation but asked to have Howard's name removed as the primary composer and his put on to the credits for the song as the lead composer.

Awards and accolades

Joe Howard was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the ASCAP Hall of Fame Committee in 1970.

Songs

Collaborating with songwriters such as wife Ida Emerson, Frank R. Adams, Will Hough and Harold Orlob, Howard produced such hits as:

Howard also wrote the stage scores for:

Howard also wrote the music and lyrics for "Goodbye, My Lady Love", featured in the original production of Show Boat (1927).

Additional Reading