Edward Vincent (Eddie) Kilfeather (April 5, 1900, Portland, Oregon - January 13, 1950, Los Angeles, California) was a musical

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and

arranger In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...

who worked on the Columbia Pictures'

animated cartoon Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anima ...

s. Kilfeather was born in 1900 to Edward and Hannah Kilfeather and grew up in Portland, Oregon. His father was a well-known Democrat found guilty of jury bribing in 1898. The young Kilfeather hooked up with another Portlander, George Olsen, who had formed a band and was its pianist, conductor and arranger. The band headed south and in San Francisco when it was hired by Flo Ziegfeld in 1923 to come to New Year to play music for the show '' Kid Boots''. Kilfeather co-wrote the song ''Goin' Home Blues'' for the show. Ziegfeld became enraged with the band after the opening of ''

Whoopee! ''Whoopee!'' is a 1928 musical comedy with a book based on Owen Davis's play, ''The Nervous Wreck.'' The musical libretto was written by William Anthony McGuire, with music by Walter Donaldson and lyrics by Gus Kahn. The musical premiered on Bro ...

'' in 1928. While on the road in Pittsburgh, he fired Kilfeather and replaced him with a personal favorite. Olsen protested by having his musicians refuse to play for the replacement. Ziegfeld relented and gave Kilfeather his job back. The Olsen band quit when the week was over. Kilfeather wrote a number of songs that Olsen recorded on RCA Records, including ''She's a Corn Fed Indiana Girl''. (1926) He was so taken with the cornet playing of

Bix Beiderbecke Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, pianist and composer. Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player noted for an inventive lyrical app ...

on a recording of ''Jazz Me Blues'' that he transcribed the notes and used it in Olsen's

RCA Victor RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Aris ...

recording ''You'll Never Get to Heaven With Those Eyes''. He moved to Los Angeles in 1931 with the Olsen band and occasionally played with Sam Coslow's orchestra at the Roosevelt Hotel. He arrived at the

Charles Mintz Charles Bear Mintz (November 5, 1889 – December 30, 1939)''Social Security Death Index, 1935–2014''. Social Security Administration. was an American film producer and distributor who assumed control over Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictu ...

cartoon studio in 1937 and stayed after it was absorbed by Columbia in 1941. His first short was ''Merry Mannequins'' and he was involved in 64 cartoons through the release of ''Up N' Atom'' in 1947. He was the studio's musical director, sometimes working in conjunction with composer Paul Worth. A stroke forced Eddie to retire as the cartoon studio's musical director in 1946. He was replaced by Darrell Calker, who was working with the Walter Lantz studio at the time.''The Oregonian'', January 14, 1950, page seven, obituary Kilfeather died in 1950, leaving behind his wife, the former Adelaide Robinson, who died in 1991, and a daughter, Mary Ellen.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kilfeather, Eddie 1900 births 1950 deaths American film score composers Musicians from Portland, Oregon 20th-century classical musicians 20th-century American composers