Today is the birthday of Louis Silvers (1889-1954). Silvers got his start playing in vaudeville (sometimes teamed with Arthur Freed), and supplied material and worked as musical director for Gus Edwards. In the teens and early twenties he supplied songs to Broadway shows, and scoring silent films. One of his hit tunes from 1920 was “April Showers”, co-written with Buddy DeSilva and performed by Al Jolson. This led to Silver’s scoring The Jazz Singer in 1927, which led to him scoring and conducting soundtracks for literally hundreds of Hollywood movies through the end of his life. Check out his extensive credits at IMDB here.
To learn more about the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
(Travalanche) 