Joseph Edgar Howard was an American Broadwaycomposer, lyricist, librettist, and performer. A famed member of Tin Pan Alley along with wife and composer Ida Emerson as part of the song-writing team of Howard and Emerson, his hits included "Hello! Ma Baby" and Broadway musicals like "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now?".
Early years
Joseph Howard was born on February 12, 1870, in New York City. He grew up in a gang-terrorized part of the city and was frequently beaten by his father. His mother died when he was 8 years old, and he ran away to a Catholic orphanage, serving as an altar boy and singing in the choir. Avoiding his father, who had discovered the boy's place of refuge, he rode a freight train to Kansas City, Missouri. There he sang in a saloon and sold newspapers. It was in Kansas City that he was discovered by George Walker of Williams and Walker who arranged for Howard to receive voice training. From Kansas City, he went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he had his first taste of the theater.
Career
Howard 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 from 1906 until her death 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 big 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 musical The Prince of To-Night and became the subject of controversy many years later when one of Howard's employees, Harold Orlob, 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 The Gay Nineties Revue, 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 Harold Orlob, 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. 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. 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.
