Memorable Lyrics, Unforgettable Melodies : Two Basic Rules of Songwriting Guide a 94-Year-Old Composer to a Lifetime of Hits and a Partnership with Bing Crosby

Harry Tobias sits alone in his simple house on Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks these days, about 3,000 miles and 78 years from the Worcester, Mass., department store where he wrote his first song, “National Sports.”

“I wrote it on the back of a packing box, and here are the lyrics. Oh, you have to cry when you hear ‘em,” he chuckled in a still-playful voice. Then he burst out in a sweet, wobbly tenor:

There’s Ty Cobb in baseball/Who has it on him/ There’s Ted Coy in football/With terrible limb/ In running and jumpin’,/ there’s no one has it on us/ And the motto of our country is ‘Always Just!’ “That’s it!” Tobias chortled. “Those lyrics are a tragedy, but it was a great start for me.”

Indeed it was. Lyricist Harry Tobias, 94, can list among his post-”National Sports” accomplishments such timeless songs as “Sail Along, Silv’ry Moon,” “No Regrets,” “Sweet and Lovely,” “Miss You,” “At Your Command” and “I’m Gonna Get You”--tunes that were recorded by everyone from Bing Crosby to Phoebe Snow, Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra, tunes that are nothing less than American pop music history.

And although many of his friends and colleagues from the years of his prime are, as he puts it, “not here no more,” to say that Harry Tobias is alone with his memories is like saying a sultan is alone with his harem or a great-great-grandfather is alone with his family. Tobias’ memories simply don’t leave him alone. They keep popping up all over the world, still earning money and making people tap their feet.

“You know, ‘Miss You’ was made a hit by Rudy Vallee and Billy Vaughn back in 1929,” said Tobias, who actually is a great-great-grandfather. “Well, Billy Vaughn--a wonderful, wonderful man--just got back from a tour of Japan, and he’s made it a hit all over again. He uses it as his theme song. It’s a hit today!”

Tobias and his brothers Charles (a composer who co-wrote, among other things “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me”) and Henry (also a lyricist) wrote or co-wrote so many successful tunes in the New York of the ‘20s that they became known as the “Royal Family of Tin-Pan Alley.” Harry’s greatest fame, however, came in the ‘30s after he moved to Los Angeles, largely as a result of a man who gave the Tobias words more beauty and expressiveness than their authors imagined possible. A man named Crosby.

“My wife Sophie and I were living in a little place at $37.50 a month in Hollywood,” said Tobias, a widower since 1983. “It was the Depression. Well, I heard Bing sing a song over the radio, coming from the Coconut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel. He sang ‘I Surrender to You,’ a great song, and a great rendition--by a new guy I never heard before.

“So I said to my wife, ‘I’m going down to see him,’ because I thought he’d be interested in a new title I got. I already had a hit, ‘Sweet and Lovely,’ which Bing and his group, the Rhythm Boys, were featuring. I introduced myself to Harry Barris, the piano player, told him I had a follow-up called ‘At Your Command.’ I made an appointment, and we started working on it the next day. It was the beginning of Bing’s success over the air. . . .”

Said Tobias: “Bing sang one song after another of mine at the worst time in the history of the music business. I made a living. And Bing did himself good too because they were accepted.”

It was, of course, not quite that simple. Prospective songwriters were lining up to see Crosby at that time, Tobias said. It took a lot more than a “How do you do?” and an offer of some lyrics to get der Bingle’s favor.

“I’m a salesman,” Tobias said. “I sold Chevrolets in New York and in between that I went door-to-door to publishers hawking my own songs. That’s what it takes, brother, and if you haven’t got it, you lose. Sure, there were guys walking off the street trying to write songs for Bing. But you’ve got to have ambition and aggression. That hope business is all right, but it doesn’t get the job done.”

Indeed, hope alone has not done the job for Tobias, but it got his foot solidly in the door. His is a classic 20th-Century American success story, and it started back in 1911 in the leafy, quiet working-class neighborhood of Worcester, about 30 miles outside Boston. There, during breaks at McGinnis’ Department Store, 16-year-old Tobias (working as a stock boy) scribbled down lyrics, with no real idea how to reach the goal that he had dreamed of “as long as I can remember”: to write songs for a living.

In a twist straight out of a Hollywood B-movie, he saw an ad in a magazine reading “Write a Song! Make a Fortune!” and responded by sending the words to what would become “National Sports.” All you needed, the ad said, was $25, and a “professional composer” would set your lyrics to music and send you 200 copies of your completed song.

“Well, $25 was like $25,000 to me back then,” Tobias recalled. “One of the fellows in the store, a buyer, was interested in my enthusiasm, and he says, ‘I’ll loan you $15, you dig up the rest.’ And he made it possible.” (Harry’s parents furnished the remaining $10.)

“So in come the 200 copies. And I says to myself, ‘They did it. They really published the song! What the hell do I do with it?’ It had Ty Cobb’s picture on the title page and my name on it. Well, I thought, I’ve got to do something. In those days, every house had a kid playing violin or piano, so I knocked at the doors, and the Worcester Telegram wrote a good article about me, and people bought ‘em! Ten cents a copy! Can you believe it?”

Although Tobias sent more songs to publishers in New York, they came back “faster than I sent them.” So he decided to sell the sheet music door-to-door with kid brother Charlie, struggling to make a living “like everybody.”

Some of the “everybodies” he was to struggle along with in his career were his friend George Gershwin, a little-known piano player for the Remick Music Co. in New York City when he met Tobias.

A 1920 photo hanging in the Tobias den pictures Harry, Gershwin and some other friends at the Swan Lake Inn in the Catskills. It hangs near a framed original front page of the sheet music to “At Your Command,” with Crosby credited as co-writer. (“He didn’t really write any of it, but he did me such a great favor by singing it that I gave him co-credit,” Tobias said as he winked.)

The den also houses photos of Tobias with Gene Autry (“Yeah, I wrote a lot of hillbilly songs too. ‘Call of the Rockies,’ ‘Hills of Idaho’ ”), Rudy Vallee, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and the Marx Brothers (Harry wrote “A Sweet Somebody Like You,” the theme of Groucho’s radio version of “You Bet Your Life”). Other mementos include a Los Angeles proclamation of “Tobias Brothers Day” in 1983 and a program from ASCAP’s 75th anniversary program at the Schubert Theater in February (at which Harry and Henry played and sang “Sweet and Lovely” at the piano).

Tobias’ lyrics are generally marked by a sweetness and simplicity that readily conjure images of, well, sweeter and simpler days. Consider “Sail Along Silv’ry Moon”:

“Sail along, silv’ry moon/ Trail along lovers’ lane/ Sail along, silv’ry moon/ To my love again/ In the glow of your light/ Let me see her tonight/ Once again hold her tight/ Back in lovers’ lane. . . .” “I always say that the ingredients for a popular song are words that are easy to remember and melodies that are hard to forget. That’s why they’re lasting.”

Is there any one of his tunes that Harry is particularly wild about?

“I hate to say it, but the favorite songs I’ve ever written are the ones that make the most money!” Tobias said, laughing again. Then the laughter stopped for a moment and his voice dropped half an octave.

“But I’ll tell you. I’ve got a song, yes, that means more to me than money. I lost a 20-year-old boy in 1942 from kidney failure. Beautiful guy, valedictorian of his class at Fairfax High. Had everything going for him. He wrote words and music, and better than we do. And he had this damned kidney thing and couldn’t make it.

“The song is ‘In God We Trust,’ and I dedicated it to my little boy.”

Tobias has a daughter, and his brother Henry lives in Hollywood (Charles died in 1970). He has a driver to help with errands, but is able to manage his housework and affairs--arthritis notwithstanding.

“The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be,” he said with another wink, adding, “No, I didn’t write that one.”

The old gray mare, however, does keep well-occupied.

“I get myself involved as much as possible with writing and answering letters, going to the Friars Club. . . . And I’m tickled to death I’m busy. It’s a lonesome old town.”

It’s a lonesome old town. Did he write that one?

“Yes, yes, that’s one of mine!”

And yes, yes, Harry Tobias still writes songs. Asked for a sample of recent work, he produced a piece of sheet music with melody written by brother Henry. Holding the music aloft, Harry Tobias peered down at the black notes through thick glasses, smiling. And he sang--in that sweet, wobbly tenor:

“Never resent growing old/ For not ev’ryone is granted the privilege/ Whatever your life may unfold/ If you’re blessed with good health, it’s a privilege/ Be grateful each moment, each hour, each year/ Be thankful for each precious day that you’re here/ You’ll live much longer, I’m told/ If you never resent growing old. . . .”