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Charles K. Harris
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Charles K. Harris · Charles Kassel Harris (1867 to 1930) was an American songwriter and one of the pioneers of Tin Pan Alley. He was born in Poughkeepsie in New York State, in a Jewish family of ten children, and grew up in Saginaw and Milwaukee. He began as a banjo player and in 1885 wrote his first song, Since Maggie Learned To Skate, for a play. In his long career he published more than three hundred songs. Admirers called him the king of the tearjerkers.
Music and breakthrough
His big breakthrough came in 1892 with After the Ball, the story of an old man who tells his niece about his lost love. John Philip Sousa played the song at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago, after which sheet-music sales in the 1890s rose above five million copies. Break the News to Mother followed in 1897, about a dying soldier, and in 1899 A Rabbi's Daughter. His sentimental songs were sung on stages and in music halls, but the rural bands of the South also took them over. Charlie Poole and The Carter Family recorded songs of his, such as Hello Central, Give Me Heaven from 1901.
Influence
Harris later wrote for musicals, among others with Oscar Hammerstein, and in 1906 published the book How to Write a Popular Song. His work shows how the music industry around 1900 revolved around sheet music: a good song spread via pianos at home, long before the record took its place.