Brown, Lew

Lyricist Lew Brown, as he called himself, arrived in New York from Russia in 1898 at the age of five, the son of Jewish immigrants from Odessa. He quit high school before graduating and in 1912 wrote his first song. In the roaring twenties, he wrote songs for such Tin Pan Alley composers as Albert Von Tilzer. In 1925 he joined Buddy DeSylva and Ray Henderson in a three-man song writing partnership that produced such upbeat songs as “Button Up Your Overcoat" and “The Birth of the Blues.” The group headed for Hollywood in 1929 but became a duo when DeSylva left in 1931. Brown and Henderson continued to work together. By 1939, Brown estimated that he had written or collaborated on around 7,000 songs. In 1942, he wrote the hit “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Shortly after he retired, having written or co-written about 24 stage and film musicals. In 1956 the musical biopic “The Best Things in Life Are Free” recounted the story of the team of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson. All three (of whom the last was the only one still alive) were inducted into the Song Writers’ Hall of Fame in 1970.