Roaring Twenties: Gerald Marks & His Orchestra - Without You Sweetheart, 1927

Gerald Marks and His Hotel Tuller Orchestra – Without You Sweetheart, Fox-Trot (DeSylva, Brown, Henderson) with Vocal Trio, Columbia 1927 (USA)
NOTE: Gerald MARKS (born 1900 in Saginaw, Michigan - died 1997 in New York City) is an American composer and bandleader. He became a self-taught pianist at the age of 6, when he joined his aunt during her piano lessons. At the age of 15 he sent a song to Irving Berlin with the note "You and I could make a lot of money together". After leaving school he went to Detroit where he played piano in Seymour Simons' orchestra. It was then that he wrote his biggest hit "All of Me" with lyrics by Seymour Simons, which he unsuccessfully tried to sell to music publishers in New York. It was only when he met the popular singer Belle Baker and played the song to her and he was amazed to find that she burst into sobs. She embraced the song and performed it in 1931 on the radio, making it a huge and immortal hit. He later learned that Baker had just lost her husband, and his song spoke directly to her broken heart. All Of Me was recorded around 2,000 times by artists such as Louis Armstrong, Paul Whiteman, Mildred Bailey, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Dean Martin, becoming one of the most recorded songs of all time. Marks also wrote "That's What I Want for Christmas" for the film Stowaway starring Shirley Temple and "Is It True What They Say About Dixie" recorded by Al Jolson. Gerald Marks hated the lyrics, which his friend Sam Lerner wrote for him, but sent the song to Al Jolson, who made it one of his most popular standards. Marks enjoyed a long life, and in later years sat on the board of the Songwriters' Hall of Fame and gave lectures about his experiences as a songwriter in the heyday of Tin Pan Alley. He asked that his remains be laid to rest in an urn with the epitaph "All Of Me".