Composer Walter Donaldson was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 15, 1893. He was a son of a piano teacher and showed an early talent for composition, writing songs for plays put on by his fellow high school students. After graduating from high school, he worked as a clerk in a Wall Street brokerage house and then found a job as a demonstrator for music publishers. The great irony of Donaldson’s early career is that he was fired as a demonstrator when he was found writing his own music during business hours!
Donaldson’s first success came in 1915 with the song “Back Home in Tennessee”, a top five hit in 1916 for Prince’s Orchestra. Later that year he wrote “You’d Never Know the Old Home Town of Mine”, lyric by Howard Johnson and a top ten hit for Byron Harlan in 1916. From 1916 through 1919, he wrote several hit songs including “The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady”, “You’re a Million Miles from Nowhere”, “I’ll be Happy When the Preacher Makes You Mine”, “How Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm?” and “Don’t Cry, Frenchy”.
During World War I he entertained troops at US Army Camps, and it was at Camp Upton that he befriended the young Irving Berlin. In 1919, he joined Berlin’s publishing firm, Irving Berlin, Inc. Working for Berlin, Donaldson wrote “My Mammy”, “Down South”, “My Little Bimbo Down on a Bamboo Isle”, “My Buddy”, “Carolina in the Morning”, “Beside a Babbling Brook”, “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby”, “That Certain Party”, “My Sweetie Turned Me Down”, “Isn’t She the Sweetest Thing”, “For My Sweetheart”, “At Sundown”, “My…
Discography Highlights
CAROLINA IN THE MORNING
Gus Kahn, Walter Donaldson
N/A
MY BLUE HEAVEN
George Whiting, Walter Donaldson
George Whiting Publishing/Donaldson Publishing Co.
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