Compositions Albert Piantadosi was the oldest of six children born to Italian immigrant Joseph Piantadosi and his Italian-born wife Rosina "Rosa" Pietruzelli, the others being Cecilia (9/1884), George (5/1887), Amelia M. (2/1890), Francis "Frank" (1/12/1891) and Arthur A. (11/4/1892). While later records put his birth year as 1883 or 1884, the 1900 census clearly indicated that Albert was born in August of 1882. He attended Saint James School in Manhattan and took some private training in piano, as well as courses in harmony and theory, but the specific nature of those courses is unknown. The 1900 census showed Joseph to be a barber, and Albert, nearly 18, working as a bookkeeper. Joseph also listed barber as his occupation on his 1903 passport application. On January 3, 1905, Al was married to Catherine Corcoran in Manhattan.
Even though Al had been working at a "real job," he clearly had a talent for music which was soon applied to smaller venues around New York from Chinatown to mid-town. Working at times as an accompanist in vaudeville theaters or summer resorts, and at others as a restaurant pianist and cabaret singer, he eventually ended up working at popular downtown restaurant named Callahans. Among other musicians who had worked there during the period of 1905 and 1906 was a singing waiter named Israel Baline. Izzy was soon working at a place called either Pelham's Cafe, or more commonly cited as Nigger Mike's.
While Al took to the piano at Callahans, Izzy wrote the lyrics to his first song at the request of his employer, as both Callahans and Nigger Mikes, along with other restaurants in the city, prided themselves on having their own composers and themes.
He may have taken a page from Al's repertoire, which naturally included many Italian songs from his familial heritage. Al had just written an Italian character song that made for a minor hit, My Mariuccia Take a Steamboat (She's Gone Away), identified to some degree with Callahans. Izzy, who had been brought up as a Russian Jew, responded with the Italian song Marie from Sunny Italy. Somehow in the process of getting it published Israel Baline became I. Berlin, and from that point he took Irving Berlin as his name. Just the same, it would be a few years before he eclipsed Al's popularity, even though the pair wrote a song together over a year later. That was the decided non-hit Just Like the Rose eventually published in 1909. (Later claims that Berlin and Piantadosi had written even more songs together have never been substantiated by publication or copyright records, so may, in fact, be untrue.)
He may have taken a page from Al's repertoire, which naturally included many Italian songs from his familial heritage. Al had just written an Italian character song that made for a minor hit, My Mariuccia Take a Steamboat (She's Gone Away), identified to some degree with Callahans. Izzy, who had been brought up as a Russian Jew, responded with the Italian song Marie from Sunny Italy. Somehow in the process of getting it published Israel Baline became I. Berlin, and from that point he took Irving Berlin as his name. Just the same, it would be a few years before he eclipsed Al's popularity, even though the pair wrote a song together over a year later. That was the decided non-hit Just Like the Rose eventually published in 1909. (Later claims that Berlin and Piantadosi had written even more songs together have never been substantiated by publication or copyright records, so may, in fact, be untrue.)Al finally spent more time on the vaudeville stage in 1907 and 1908, working with singer Anna Chandler and the team of Burns and Law. His reputation as a writer and presenter of Italian and Jewish character songs, and even sentimental pieces, helped him obtain a position with the Leo Feist publishing firm, where he became a professional manager, essentially both providing music for the firm and some of its staff lyricists, and working to sell that music backstage in theaters and vaudeville halls. Through manager Bert Cooper he became a headliner in the team of Piantadosi and Dunham, featuring Mariucca (sometimes seen as Mariutch, confusing it with a similar song of the time), I'm a Yiddish Cowboy (Tough Guy Levi) and Good Luck Mary. In spite of his association with Feist, advertisements claimed that "We are comedians; it is not a 'song-plugging' act." Between this and his introduction to a number of lyricists, including Edgar Leslie and Jeff T. Brannen, 1909 became a banner year for Al. Later in the year he teamed up with Matt Silvey for a tour featuring character songs.
The 1910 census showed Al still living with his parents and some of his siblings in Manhattan. He was listed as a composer of music, and his father was now working as an importer of whips,
a business that was already in a downturn thanks to the increasing presence of automobiles on city streets. Al was also shown as widowed, meaning Catherine had died prior to that census, but when and why remain unclear. In early 1910 Piantadosi's first real hit was issued, That Italian Rag, in both instrumental and song format with lyrics by Leslie. Touring with it in vaudeville, he managed to make it a rather substantial hit that year, boosting both his value as a song writer and his personal income. Now reportedly pulling in $10,000 or more per year, Al kept busy between his travels in vaudeville and his responsibilities with Feist. This may have included schilling songs to recording stars as well, since his works started appearing more frequently on discs as well.
a business that was already in a downturn thanks to the increasing presence of automobiles on city streets. Al was also shown as widowed, meaning Catherine had died prior to that census, but when and why remain unclear. In early 1910 Piantadosi's first real hit was issued, That Italian Rag, in both instrumental and song format with lyrics by Leslie. Touring with it in vaudeville, he managed to make it a rather substantial hit that year, boosting both his value as a song writer and his personal income. Now reportedly pulling in $10,000 or more per year, Al kept busy between his travels in vaudeville and his responsibilities with Feist. This may have included schilling songs to recording stars as well, since his works started appearing more frequently on discs as well.Near the end of the year Albert would team up with lyricist Joseph McCarthy, and along with Joe Goodwin who joined them in 1911, they would turn out a number of passable songs over the next several years. One of those was a variation on That Italian Rag titled That Dreamy Italian Waltz. It would be followed in 1911 by That Italian Serenade. Al's clear Italian heritage was exploited in many advertisements and column mentions of his work.
From 1911 through 1914 Al divided his time between the stage and the composing piano, having works issued by a number of publishers. He wrote lyrics on occasion, even with other composers, but was mostly known for his music. Some of it was composed for or interpolated into Broadway shows of the time. Among his most popular works of this period were the sentimental Your Daddy Did the Same Thing Fifty Years Ago and Melinda's Wedding Day. He scored big in 1913 with The Curse of an Aching Heart, his only work composed with Henry Fink. By 1914 most of his pieces had turned toward the sentimental type, rather than his earlier character or ethnic tunes. On April 23, 1914, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was formed by a consortium of members from all three disciplines. Al Piantadosi was a charter member of this organization which still functions as an advocate for the legal and fiscal rights of songwriters a century and more later.
Then in 1915 came Al's best known, and easily his most controversial work.
Then in 1915 came Al's best known, and easily his most controversial work. While the composer of a song typically provides only the music, although many penned their own lyrics, since their work was often better known that that of their lyricists, they often got the blame for the end result, or at least for participating in the piece. Alfred Bryan, who had written with Al as early as 1909, took up the cause of peace in a time when war was erupting in Europe, and wrote lyrics for the well-intentioned I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier, for which Al provided an appropriate melody. Or did he? (More later on that.) The sentiment was simply that if mothers raised their boys to be pacifists that they would not be out there killing the boys of other mothers, and war would end, or perhaps even be avoided to begin with. This made it a banner piece for both the pacifists who were protesting any American involvement in Europe's war (and there were many, including Woodrow Wilson in his presidiental campaign of 1916), and for the suffragette movement as well, who included the abolishment of war and alcohol amongst their primary goals. The fine Rosenbaum Studios cover shows a mother in a parlor earnestly protecting her son from the horrors of war which appear behind them in a cloud of explosions and soldiers.
The piece seemed like a good idea at the time, and was initially well received. I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier was definitely one of the most talked about songs of 1915 and 1916 as the merits of pacifism and isolationism were discussed on a national level. It was also bandied about in Great Britain, quickly losing favor once they were attacked by German forces. In spite of running on such a platform in 1916, however vague it may have been, President Woodrow Wilson was compelled to change his mind (if it had not already been made up) to enter the United States into the conflict in 1917. This move also changed the public's perception of the Piantadosi and Bryan piece, even though The Great War, as it was called at the time, was never really popular with the American public as a whole.
Between 1915 and 1918 several parodies of the piece appeared. The most visceral was I Did Not Raise My Boy to Be a Coward.
There was also the expected response in I'm Glad I Raised My Boy to Be a Soldier. A comic take on the lilting phrase was I Didn't Raise My Dog to Be a Sausage. Overall, by 1917 Piantadosi was receiving much more grief in the press for the work than Bryan. In short, they were simply songwriters who responded to the call of Tin Pan Alley, which meant writing songs the public wanted, and which did not necessarily reflect their own political or social views. However, there was another reason that Al should not have been a victim, although to some degree, however unintentionally, he may have been a culprit in another way.
There was also the expected response in I'm Glad I Raised My Boy to Be a Soldier. A comic take on the lilting phrase was I Didn't Raise My Dog to Be a Sausage. Overall, by 1917 Piantadosi was receiving much more grief in the press for the work than Bryan. In short, they were simply songwriters who responded to the call of Tin Pan Alley, which meant writing songs the public wanted, and which did not necessarily reflect their own political or social views. However, there was another reason that Al should not have been a victim, although to some degree, however unintentionally, he may have been a culprit in another way.In 1916 a lawsuit was filed against publisher Leo Feist by the publisher Harry Haas. It asserted that Piantadosi had pirated the now popular melody of the soldier song from Haas' partner, William Cahalin's song You Wll Never Know How Much I Really Cared. In a complicated plagiarism case that turned out to be less than ground-breaking, it was concluded that both sides had made missteps, including Piantadosi who may or may not have taken at least the main melodic points of the Cahalin song and many of the rhythms and applied them to the soldier piece. There was no absolute identity established, but the nominally musical judge managed to find enough similarity, using comparison graphs, to at least confirm a probable connection. However, since Cahalin's piece had only been unleashed into the vaudeville theaters in late 1914, and the soldier song published in January of 1915, there was some gray area in there as well. That Haas did not come out with his complaint until well after Piantadosi and Bryan's song was a hit was also a point of contention. Ultimately the judge decided that there was a probability of plagiarism, but only awarded a moderate remuneration to Haas and Cahalin, and given the variances between the two works, no change of compositional credit. If one had not been paying attention to the legal proceedings in a couple of papers, no knowledge of this behind the scenes conflict would have ever been known.
The year 1916 would bring positive changes into Al's life as well. In March he was married again, this time to Edna Hannah Robinson of California. After an extended honeymoon to the west, Al set to work on both new music and a new business. Taking the tact "if you aren't satisfied with them, become one of them," Al and his brother George formed the Al Piantadosi publishing company. Most of the works they turned out over the next several years were by Al and his close circle of musical friends. He had no real hits in 1916, but the highly sentimental Baby Shoes did relatively well. The following two years were, of course, largely dominated by the war in Europe. As Al had already taken some blows concerning his earlier soldier song,
he appears to have chosen his material of 1917 and 1918 carefully, his biggest hit of the war being All Aboard for Home, Sweet Home composed with frequent collaborators Jack Glogau and Addison Burkhardt. His own draft record had him listed as a self-employed publisher and song writer living in Harlem at 535 W. 135th Street.
he appears to have chosen his material of 1917 and 1918 carefully, his biggest hit of the war being All Aboard for Home, Sweet Home composed with frequent collaborators Jack Glogau and Addison Burkhardt. His own draft record had him listed as a self-employed publisher and song writer living in Harlem at 535 W. 135th Street.From 1918 forward Al's output slowed considerably, in part because he was running his company and in part due to occasional performance runs in New York and beyond. Even at that he kept on adding an impressive slate of lyricists and other composers to his personal repertoire, ultimately amassing works with no less than 94 of them. His works ranged from the reverently personal The Woman Thou Gavest Me to the unusual Cow Bells and a number of blues songs. In 1919 Al held a contest along with entertainer Bert Walton and in conjunction with Proctor's Theater in Manhattan to collect suggestions for popular song titles, offering to provide the music and lyrics for three of them. The winners would get a royalty contract for their song, which would be written by Piantadosi. The results of this competition were not located, so it is unclear if the three pieces were ever composed or who the winners may have been.
The 1920 census taken in Manhattan showed Al and Edna hosting George Piantadosi, with the brothers listed respectively as a music publisher and music business salesman. During this time Al entered a bit of a lull in his composing activities, with an output of a scant few songs a year through 1922, and only one located for 1923. However, in 1925 he hit gold again with Pal of my Cradle Days, composed to lyrics by the largely unknown Marshall Montgomery. Both 1925 and 1926 saw a decent surge in activity for Al and his friends. Then, in 1927, The Jazz Singer changed the entertainment industry by combining Tin Pan Alley with film. Still on the East Coast, Al teamed up with Jack Glogau and writer Nat Carr to provide both plot and music for the film Sarah: The Talk of Hollywood. The film did not gain traction, and soon after that Al supposedly (according his obituary) retired from music. George had been running the publishing enterprise for a while, and he pretty much took it over in the late 1920s. The 1930 census showed Al living in Brooklyn, and still listed as a song writer.
Reports of Al's so-called retirement were premature. While his output would never be what it once was, he continued to write through 1933, working largely with Jack Glogau during that time. Then he took a decade break from popular song writing. At some point in the mid-1930s Al and Edna relocated to the Los Angeles, California area. He went to work as an arranger for films, but no copyrights with his name on them were found between 1934 and 1942. It is possible that some of his music used for films was either not copyrighted or simply uncredited. The 1940 enumeration showed the Piantadosis at their final address in Encino at the south end of the San Fernando Valley, with Al still listed as a song writer. George was living in Yonkers, New York, and while his primary career was in real estate, he was still shown as the general manager of the music publishing firm.
Piantadosi songs started appearing again during World War II, and continued sporadically until his death. In 1943 and 1944 he issued a few pieces with well-known lyricist Irving Bibo, with some of the pieces used in Hollywood films. Even in the early to mid-1950s he worked with a couple of lyricists, his last piece published in 1955. However, he curiously listed no occupation for the 1950 census. Al died in Encino, California, at age 72 in the spring of 1955 within weeks of the issue of Heart to Heart, leaving behind a relatively substantial legacy of popular, sentimental and period songs covering half a century.