travsd

Edgar Leslie: Vaudeville Hitmaker

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Today is the birthday of Tin Pan Alley songwriter Edgar Leslie (1885-1976). He began writing songs for vaudeville acts in 1909, among them Nat Wills, Joe Welch, James Barton, Lew Dockstader, and Belle Baker. Hit songs he wrote or co-wrote included “For Me and My Gal”, “Moon Over Miami”, “Among My Souvenirs” “He’d Have to Get Out (Get Out and Get Under)”, and “Sadie Salome”. He was a founding member of ASCAP, and served as its president twice, from 1931 to 1941, and from 1947 to 1953.

To find out more about show business past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.

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