Alfred Baldwin Sloane

Alfred Baldwin Sloane (28 August 1872, Baltimore – 21 February 1925, Red Bank, New Jersey) was an American composer, considered the most prolific songwriter for Broadway musical comedies at the beginning of the 20th century.

His scores were first heard in amateur productions in Baltimore, where he grew up. When Sloane first moved to New York in 1890, he began interpolating melodies into others' scores and soon was invited to create his own. His biggest hit was "Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl," which Marie Dressler introduced in ''Tillie's Nightmare'' (1910), but none of his songs found enduring popularity.

He composed only rarely after 1912, but he did provide much of the music for the 1919 and 1920 Greenwich Village Follies. He wrote one of his musicals, ''Lady Teazle,'' for Lillian Russell when she was at the height of her national popularity. His last score, for the 1925 Broadway production ''China Rose'', was in production at his death. ''China Rose'' had been produced in Boston, by Christmas Eve, 1924.

Early life

Sloane, who at the age of 18, moved from Baltimore to New York City in 1890 intending to stay a month, stayed for the rest of his life. While living in Baltimore, Sloane wrote the lyrics and music for about a dozen so-called coon songs.

As a boy in Baltimore, Sloane was an apprentice at a wholesale dry goods dealer. His father, a scientist and dilettante musician, became alarmed at the thought of him trying to make a living as a composer. However, Sloane spent most or his time in the dry goods house composing songs on the backs of pearl button cards, shirt boxes, and price tickets. Sloane was fired from the dry goods house for wasting time making rhymes. While his father was trying to find another job for him, he organized an amateur company in Baltimore which put on a musical comedy of one of his compositions and drew $25,000 in five nights. Sloane showed his father the box office reports and opposition ceased. It was soon after that the boy quit Baltimore and approached New York with misgivings as to his own ability to offer one of his shows to Oscar Hammerstein. Hammerstein produced the show and Sloane never left New York.''The actors' birthday book'', Volume 1, by Johnson Briscoe, p. 191 (1907)
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Executive positions

* At the time of his death, Sloane was the president of Composers' Publishing Company and vice president of Authors and Composers Publishing Company.

Affiliations

He was a member of The Lambs, the Green Room Club, and Old Strollers.

Selected musical scores

New York productions

* ''Peggy-Ann'' December 27, 1926 – October 29, 1927, Vanderbilt Theatre

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