Jerome H. Remick
Jerome H. Remick
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Jerome H. Remick

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Jerome H. Remick

Jerome Hosmer Remick (15 November 1867 – 15 July 1931) was an American music publisher, businessman and philanthropist in Detroit, Michigan. He established Remick Music Company, Shapiro-Remick & Company with Maurice Shapiro, and then Jerome H. Remick & Co.

Remick was born in Detroit as the son of James Albert Remick and Mary Amelia Hosmer. He graduated from the Detroit Business University in 1887 before joining the Whitney-Remick lumber firm, a family business started by his grandfather, Royal C. Remick. On June 26, 1895, Remick married Adelaide McCreery in Flint, Michigan.

Remick's interests, however, did not lie in lumber but in the developing popular sheet music industry. In 1898, he bought out the small, struggling firm of Whitney-Warner Publishing Company in Detroit, whose small catalog included Smoky Topaz (composed by Grace M. Bolen) and waltzes by Henriette B. Blanke. He turned the company into an extraordinarily successful sheet music publishing house.

In 1902, Remick and Maurice Shapiro founded Shapiro-Remick & Company, selling several million copies in 1905 of the enormously successful "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree," written by Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne. The partnership was dissolved in 1906, and Remick started his own firm (known as Jerome H. Remick & Co.). Van Alstyne continued with Remick and a string of hits followed, including "Pretty Baby" and "Your Eyes have Told Me So."

Remick's published songs influenced popular music trends and included hundreds of hits, such as "Baby Face", "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover," "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" and "Bye Bye Blackbird," all of which contributed greatly to American heritage and culture.

In 1909, the company published three ballads that sold more than a million copies – "Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet", "Moonlight Bay" in 1912 and "When You Wore a Tulip" in 1914. The firm also published ragtime music, such as "Dill Pickles Rag" and "Black and White Rag".

George Gershwin joined Remick in 1914 and composed many songs, but he left the firm shortly after they published "Rialto Ripples" in 1917. To stay competitive, Remick began to sign up unknown writers such as Harry Warren, Al Dubin, Clara Rees, Gus Kahn and Richard A. Whiting, ushering in the golden era of the Roaring Twenties music. Changes were in the air, though. The arrival of talking pictures obliged Warner Brothers to invest in publishing houses, leading to their acquisition of Remick's company in 1929, gaining Remick's catalogue and staff writers, including Harry Warren and Al Dubin, who created hits such as "42nd Street" and "I Only Have Eyes For You."

While competing publishing houses were located in Michigan, New York City and Chicago, Jerome H. Remick & Co. held sway in Detroit, also running a successful printing plant from there. The firm maintained branch offices in New York City and Chicago, with agencies all over the world, and started hundreds of music outlets under the name "Remick Song Shops" throughout the United States. Oddly, Remick could not read music at all, but he had a natural understanding of public tastes.

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