Shilkret's Song

In the mid-twenties one of the most popular songs in the land was the lugubrious lament of a dispirited convict who wished he had the wings of an angel. Some 5,000,000 copies and phonograph records of The Prisoner's Song were sold. According to a myth as hollow as it was widespread, the composer was a condemned man awaiting execution in the death house of the Missouri or Texas or Oklahoma penitentiary. In Manhattan, around the all-night delicatessens where Broadway song pluggers and publishers gather for gossip and fun, it was always assumed that the composer was Vaudevillian Guy Massey, whose name had been attached to the published music since the song's appearance in 1924.

Another claimant to authorship of The Prisoner's Song was Conductor Nathaniel ("Nat") Shilkret. Last week this sawed-off little maestro astounded the industry by going after The Prisoner's Song in dead earnest. He filed a copy of the music at the Copyright Office in Washington, had his lawyer, Maurice Speiser, call on the publishers, Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., for an accounting of the baleful ballad's huge sales and earnings.

First record of The Prisoner's Song was made twelve years ago for Victor Talking Machine Co. by nasal-voiced Vernon Daihart, Guy Massey's cousin. At that time Nat Shilkret was Victor's musical director. After the recording, Dalhart took the music he had used to the publishers. Last week Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., which still has this manuscript, was positive Massey, not Shilkret, was the author. Guy Massey himself cannot be called in to settle the dispute. He died stone deaf in San Antonio in 1925. Meantime, nobody doubts that Shilkret, now musical director for RKO Radio Pictures, is the composer of The Lonesome Road, Down the River of Golden Dreams, Some Sweet Day.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.