Jack Yellen, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany

While commenting on the Yellen/Harold Arlen song "Sweet and Hot" [written for the 1931 Broadway show You Said It], Alec Wilder comments on Yellen's influence in getting Arlen's cantor father to loosen up and allow his son to do what he wanted with his life: "Forget it," Yellen told Arlen's father who didn't want Harold to drop out of school, "He's gonna be a songwriter." Wilder also notes that Yellen's down-to-earth view of life is also reflected in a line from "Sweet and Hot": "I don't like high-brows who arch their eyebrows when a jazz tune is played" (Wilder, p. 257 hardcover Ed.).

Ed.'s note: Yellen's common-man attitude as expressed above does not exactly correspond to his oft-cited disapproval of the Democrats using his song "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the theme song for their convention that nominated FDR for president in 1932 because he was a Republican.

Arnold Shaw, in his book The Jazz Age, recounts the story of how the song "My Yiddishe Momme," which now seems virtually a folk song, originated with a Tin Pan Alley song writer as a tribute to his mother who had recently passed away. Jack Yellen wrote the lyric and an unfinished melody with no intention of publishing it. A year later in 1925, he showed it to his sometimes writing partner composer Lew Pollack who produced a finished melody. Still later Yellen showed the song to the now legendary (and Jewish) singer Sophie Tucker (Shaw, pp. 203-204).

David Ewen in his book American Songwriters takes up the story from there. When Yellen sang the song for Tucker, "she burst into tears," but suggested to Yellen that he change title to "Jewish" or "Hebrew" Momme. "Yellen not only refused but convinced Tucker to sing the chorus in Yiddish. She introduced the song at the Palace Theater in New York in 1925 and brought down the house."

A Tucker recording of the song [She recorded it in both English and Yiddish. Listen below.] reached number 5 on the charts in 1928. Ewen quotes Tucker that "I have found whenever I sang 'My Yiddishe Momme' in the United States or Europe, gentiles have loved the song [without needing] to understand the Yiddish words. They knew by instinct what I was saying" (Ewen, p. 445).

The album The Great Sophie Tucker shown above includes a different version "My Yiddeshe Momme" than the recording on the video. For a selection of rcordings of the song, choose below.

• Ain't She Sweet?
• Are You Havin' Any Fun?
• Happy Days Are Here Again

Research Resources: Jack Yellen

• Amazon
• DBOPM (Database Of Popular Music: song list, awards, hit songs, co-writers)
• Discogs.com (songwriting and arranging credits)
• Indiana University Sheet Music Collection (In Harmony): songwriter
• Internet Broadway Database (IBDB) (Broadway productions and song credits)
• Internet Movie Database (brief biography, filmography, movie song credits)
• JHU.edu (Levy Sheet Music Collection--Yellen)
• New York Public Library (catalog entries for books, personal papers, recordings, scores, etc.)
• The New York Times (articles about or related to the songwriter)
• Songwriters Hall of Fame (biography and song list)
• Wikipedia (name article)
• ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Cattell/Bowker, Fourth edition, 1980 (dates, collaborators, shows/movies, songs, etc., entry p. 556)
• David Ewen. American Songwriters, An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists). -- a wide selection of used copies is available at abebooks.com (entry pp. 444-446).
• Arnold Shaw, The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920s, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 (multiple references to Yellen and to his song "My Yiddishe Mama" and how Sophie Tucker came to sing it.).
• Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball (Eds.), Reading Lyrics, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000 (pp. 143-147 overview plus lyrics to seven songs). Read the introduction to this book at NYTimes.com.
• Warren W. Vaché, The Unsung Songwriters: America's Masters of Melody, The Scarecrow Press, 2000 (brief Bio.; entry pp. 561-562).
• David A. Jasen, Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song, New York: Routledge, 2003 (entry, pp. 441-442).
• Ken Bloom. The American Songbook, The Singers, The Songwriters and the Songs. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2005 (multiple references to Yellen mostly in connection with his various music writing co-writers).
• Philip Furia and Michael Lasser, America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley, New York: Routledge, 2006 (discussions of Yellen songs "Ain't She Sweet?" and "Happy Days Are Here Again.").
• Thomas S. Hischak. The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008 (entry, p. 516).
• Sophie Tucker, "My Yiddish Mama": Edmund StAustell

Notes

• Arnold Shaw, The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920s , New York: Oxford University Press, 1987
• David Ewen. American Songwriters , New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists)
• " My Yiddishe Momme "

Cite this page: Jack Yellen, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songwriters/x_y_z_sws/yellen_jack.html