Life and Times of William Christopher O'Hare

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  • Shreveport
    • City Background & O'Hare Activities
    • Music Director >
      • Grand Opera House
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    • Composer--Before Levee Revels
    • Composer-- Levee Revels and after
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  • Marriage & Sons
    • Lottie Slater
    • Wm. Crockett O'Hare
    • Vincent Slater O'Hare
  • NYC
    • Arrival & Background
    • Arranger >
      • Rags & Other Instrumentals
      • Pop/Patriotic Songs 1901-1908
      • Pop/Patriotic Songs, 1909-1931
      • Medleys
      • Misc. Shows, 1902-1905
      • Misc. Shows, 1906-1909
      • Misc. Shows, 1910-1914
      • Hippodrome Background & O'Hare's First Tunes
      • Hippodrome Shows
      • Vocal Arrangements, Secular and Sacred
      • Misc. Arrangements
      • An Orchestrator's Prank
    • Composer >
      • Instrumentals, 1901-1902
      • Instrumentals, 1903-1909
      • Early NY Songs
      • Sacred Music/Organist
      • Silent Films
      • Misc Compositions, 1905-1914
      • Misc Compositions, 1917-1934
    • Letter to the Editor
  • Death
  • Blog
  • Contact Me
  • Home
  • Washington, D.C.
    • Formative Years
    • DC Family >
      • Early Ancestors
      • Paternal Grandparents
      • Ancestral Home: Linden Grove
      • Parents
      • Siblings
  • Shreveport
    • City Background & O'Hare Activities
    • Music Director >
      • Grand Opera House
      • Choral Societies
      • Community Productions
      • Churches
    • Music Teacher
    • Composer--Before Levee Revels
    • Composer-- Levee Revels and after
    • Changes & Problems at the Opera House
  • Marriage & Sons
    • Lottie Slater
    • Wm. Crockett O'Hare
    • Vincent Slater O'Hare
  • NYC
    • Arrival & Background
    • Arranger >
      • Rags & Other Instrumentals
      • Pop/Patriotic Songs 1901-1908
      • Pop/Patriotic Songs, 1909-1931
      • Medleys
      • Misc. Shows, 1902-1905
      • Misc. Shows, 1906-1909
      • Misc. Shows, 1910-1914
      • Hippodrome Background & O'Hare's First Tunes
      • Hippodrome Shows
      • Vocal Arrangements, Secular and Sacred
      • Misc. Arrangements
      • An Orchestrator's Prank
    • Composer >
      • Instrumentals, 1901-1902
      • Instrumentals, 1903-1909
      • Early NY Songs
      • Sacred Music/Organist
      • Silent Films
      • Misc Compositions, 1905-1914
      • Misc Compositions, 1917-1934
    • Letter to the Editor
  • Death
  • Blog
  • Contact Me

Early Songs

O'Hare continued collaborating with lyricists, initially a friend from Shreveport and then other lyricists. One result was an assortment of songs published for single voice and piano.

For You, Dear (M. Witmark & Sons, 1901)

From 1901 to 1904, the Witmarks published several songs with lyrics by S. Carter Schwing and music by William Christopher O'Hare.  Early Shreveport papers reveal that S. Carter Schwing was assistant principal at Shreveport's public high school. 

By 1903, Schwing appears in the New Orleans directory as a teacher at Spencer's Business College, and by 1910, he had been promoted to business college principal. In 1894, Lucius Clay Spenser started his business college in Shreveport, but he relocated to New Orleans in 1897, hiring Schwing at some point before 1903.  Samuel Carter Schwing, approximately six years younger than O'Hare, died in 1951.
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Listen to For You, Dear and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
Although O'Hare and Schwing composed and published For You, Dear as a song, O'Hare also arranged it for cornet and trombone solo with band accompaniment and for mixed voices..
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I Kissed You in My Dreams Last Night (Witmark, 1903)

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Listen to I Kissed You in My Dreams Last Night and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library

Do You Remember, Dear?  (Witmark, 1903)

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Listen to Do You Remember, Dear? and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library

My Little Lady (Witmark, 1904)

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Song copyright
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Listen to My Little Lady and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
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Song also arranged for hotel orchestra

Sayonara, A Japanese Love Song (Witmark, 1904)

Like O'Hare's 1904 instrumental Ky-isses, this song must have been inspired by the Russo-Japanese war.  Carter Schwing's first verse describes a young couple's sorrowful parting.  Verse 2 speaks of his sailing away, of her tear-stained face watching and praying for his return, and of her parting words still in his heart.  Her parting words form the chorus probably strike today's readers as politically incorrect or as humorous because of the rhyme :  "Sayonara, my 'Little fighting Jap'--the bravest soldier upon the map--Now Sayonara, I'll ever faithful be, --while you are fighting for your country and for me."
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Listen to Sayonara and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
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Aeolian Pianola roll arrangement

Don't Send My Heart Away (Witmark, 1905)

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Listen to Don't Send My Heart Away and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
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Popular Tin Pan Alley lyricist Bartley Costello collaborated with a number of well-known and lesser-known composers such as Harry Armstrong, Kerry Mills, Al Piantadosi, and James W. Casey.  His best known song may well be If You Had All the World and Its Gold.
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Sweet Love of Mine (Witmark, 1905)

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Listen to Sweet Love of Mine and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
Singer Eva Wallace
Eva Wallace, wife of singer Franklyn Wallace, was a serious actress and opera singer who turned to vaudeville and became known as "The Girl with the Smiling Face."
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Lyricist Frank Sheridan (a.k.a. John Franklin)

 O'Hare's Witmark collaboration with actor Frank Sheridan on songs such as Sweet Love of Mine and Farewell Welsh Rarebit most likely led to O'Hare's later years of work for John Franklin Music Company, owned by John Franklin Sheridan.

By using a shortened form of his middle name and his last name as his stage name but using his first and middle names for the publishing firm, John Franklin Sheridan managed to keep his performing and publishing identities separate for a number of years.  According to available court records, that use of multiple names may have been a ploy to avoid debt incurred while working as a professional actor.
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John Franklin Sheridan, lyricist, actor, and owner of John Franklin Music Company.

Farewell Welsh Rarebit (Witmark, 1905)

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Listen to Farewell Welsh Rarebit and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
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Given the debts Frank Sheridan incurred, his lyric may have been wishful thinking.  In the first verse of Sheridan's first-person lyric, the speaker tells of a poker victory against John D. Rockefeller and Johnny Gates (John Warne "Bet-a Million" Gates).  To the general public, Rockefeller, the co-founder of Standard Oil is the more famous. Gates, the entrepreneur who backed the New York Hippodrome's construction, first made his money from barbed wire, then moved to railroads and the founding of the Texas Company (Texaco).  In the second verse, the speaker tells of becoming the first Democrat elected to the White House in a century.  Both stories turn out to have been dreams and lead into a chorus that speaks of the then popular melted cheese over toast. The chorus varies slightly to fit each verse, first realizing that the winning poker game was a dream and next wondering what would happen if the oil magnates lost their money:
Farewell Welsh Rarebit!  I had the habit,
I had those fellows broke,
And just then I awoke. 
Farewell, Welsh Rarebit, Farewell!

Farewell Welsh Rarebit!  I had the habit,
If that dream came true
What would the grafters do?
Farewell, Welsh Rarebit, Farewell!


Good Fellowship (Witmark, 1906)

Although O'Hare's last located collaboration with former Shreveporter S. Carter Schwing was copyrighted in 1904, in 1906 O'Hare dedicated a song to Schwing, by then Secretary and Treasurer of Spencer's Business College in New Orleans.  

A 1920 New York Times obituary describes lyricist Charles Noel Douglas as having "written many books, plays and songs," despite having  been "a bed-ridden cripple for thirty years."  Marketed by Witmark as appropriate for commencement exercises, Good Fellowship is a song of friendship, the strength that friendship can bring an individual in troubled times, and the harmonious brotherhood it brings to humankind.
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Listen to Good Fellowship and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
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Close-up dedication to S. Carter Schwing, Shreveport lyricist of several earlier O'Hare-Schwing collaborations

Won't You Let Me Read Your Palm? (Witmark, 1907)

In 1907, O'Hare composed the music for a lyric by B. Bristow Owsley (1882-1967).  The only reference found to this song appears in WorldCat for a copy at the British Library, St. Pancras.  Listed as B. Bristone Orusley for this title on WorldCat but correctly on other items, Owsley appears in several public records as a Chicago printer.  The Chicago Tribune occasionally published a poem with his byline, and other Owsley works appear on WorldCat, including A Song Feast of Spirituals (Chicago:  Will Rossiter, 1936). Owsley, who died in Los Angeles, appears in the ASCAP Biographical Dictionary of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

There's No "Hoyle" in the Game of Love (Witmark, 1909)

In 1909, O'Hare set to music a B. Bristow Owsley lyric that could be said to support the saying "All's fair in love and war"--or, at least, in love.  Although Hoyle's famous rules apply to the first-verse poker game, according to the remaining verses, they don't apply to love.
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Listen to There's No "Hoyle" in the Game of Love and download a transcription from Bill's Audio Reference Library
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Background graphic, top of page:  Closeup of Sayonara cover
                                                                    2018  copyright on research content,  Sue Attalla