Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner Part 2 The two young men couldn't have been more homesick than when they saw the blossoming trees lining the paths in Central Park, New York City. They stood in silence, drinking in the beauty which, however, couldn't equal those back home in the Midwest. "Remember how we used to sit beneath the apple trees dreaming the day away?", one muttered. The other replied, "We'd decide whether to go swim in the crick or set up a lemonade stand to make money.

They continued to muse until, as one, an idea came to them. Even city people would like a song about an apple tree just as they would back home. That song sold over twenty six million pieces of music.

Egbert Van Alstyne and Harry Williams had met a few years earlier while touring with road shows. Teaming up for their own act, music and words, they at one time hired a young comedian, Jim Jordan, to fill out time on stage. We knew Jordan as Fibber McGee.

After a few years the songwriting duo struck out for "Tin Pan Alley" in New York, that section of the city where the music industry was centered. They arrived with but $10 between them. It was a grueling time for those somewhat naïve young men to find work but eventually Bert got a job promoting songs by going store to stage, playing music from a publishing company to, hopefully, sell it, or his own! It was long hours and low pay.

Finally, in 1903 they had a song, "Navajo," accepted by a stage show, "Nancy Brown" and it became a hit. That breakthrough opened some doors to the future and they sold more. At the time "cowboy" songs were the fashion and their "Cheyenne" became a hit also despite the competition. It was the beginning of a popular songwriting team who together wrote over three hundred tunes.

By 1907 they returned to Chicago to its "Tin Pan Alley," Randolph Street, to write many successful tunes until in 1911 Williams wanted to go out to Hollywood and get into the new moving picture business to act and direct but Bert didn't want to leave his Midwest roots again. Williams went on to California where he worked until 1922 when he died unexpectedly of pneumonia at age forty-six. An artist gone too soon.

Although many implored Egbert to go to Hollywood where, surely, he'd be successful, he would not agree to it and traveled only short distances. Other lyricists appeared for collaboration with him but it would be the to-be-well-known Gus Kahn who took up where Harry Williams ended. Together Van Alystyne and Kahn wrote pieces such as Sunshine and Roses, The Little Old Church in the Valley, Your Eyes Have Told Me So, Drifting and Dreaming, That Old Girl of Mine, On the Road to Home Sweet Home,copied here from the only piece of sheet music I was able to find! It was a song for WW I.

Their most popular song, however, was "Memories" which probably sold as many copies as "In The Shade of the Old Apple Tree." It was sung on every family's front porch, working under a car or hanging clothes on the outside lines, around a campfire and down every Lover's Lane. It remains a favorite of barbershop quartets everywhere. The sweet romantic ballads or the rollicking (or melancholy) ragtime/cakewalks are in sharp contrast to some of the traits used to describe Egbert Van Alstyne . . . a womanizer, (he was married four times), an alcoholic, chain smoker and a hypochondriac. In later life, at least, he strongly felt forgotten and unappreciated. A complicated fellow had evolved from the "musical child prodigy" he was described as when young.

By the 1930s his output of music had slowly dwindled away. He lamented the lack of lyricists. His final published song was "That Old Girl of Mine," published in 1938. Bing Crosby recorded it in 1950.

Others had adapted to modern times and places but it was likely Van Alstyne was mired in the past. Radio and moving pictures had replaced "live" entertainment, "the road shows, vaudeville and some of the big stage extravaganzas. The music he had written was still popular but he may have been burned out creatively. His name, however, was in the public's memory because at least two other songs were credited to him for many years.

He argued everywhere he had not written "Down By the Old Millstream" and "Pony Boy" so his name was out there. Another was "Pretty Baby" which had been tailored for a stage show starring Fannie Bryce whose "baby characterization" evolved into Baby Snooks on the radio but who never did introduce it. That story turned out to be too complicated to even summarize here but it was another song partially credited to Van Alstyne.

Did Egbert exhaust his creativity? The mega varieties of his works seemed to pour from his fingers and could have taken their toll. Nothing was heard from him in the late 1930s although after that time he was regularly seen at Henrici's café in Chicago across the street from his office at the Remick Music Company. There he came to the attention of Nate Gross, columnist for the now defunct Chicago Herald-American. Gross would write about him now and then which stirred the idea to use his music as a theme in the annual Chicagoland Music Festival in 1950, it sponsored by the Chicago Tribune. A full-size apple tree was needed so hometown Marengo was applied to and a large force of locals went out to a nearby farm and dug up a tree instead of using machinery which didn't arrive until the next day when it merely lifted it on a truck for transport. As Bert and his wife of twenty years, Ruth Leslie, drove onto Soldier's Field, then the site of the August event, they could pick an apple from the hometown tree Bert and Harry had wispily written of years before. It was a high moment for Van Alstyne because, by then he was in failing health.

At about that period Gus Kahn's widow, Grace, was gathering material for a movie to be made of her husband's life and career. Some of the songs he'd written were Flying Down to Rio, My Blue Heaven, My Buddy, I'm through With Love, Yes Sir, That's My Baby . . . . all great lyrics. She'd requested a picture of Bert from between 1909 and 1940, their acquaintanceship, so Bert's likeness could be closely cast in the movie. Nate Gross began to outline a story concerning Van Alstyne's biography, too, in case it was wanted. (OK, who should we cast in his part? Dan Dailey-suitably pathetic, Or Franchot Tone-aptly esthetic? Who?) However, in July, 1951 Egbert Van Alstyne died in his Rogers Park, Illinois home, age seventy three.

A flaw crops up in the final telling of his life. He'd had a "strained relationship" with his only son, Anson, and had "cut" him out of his will! As Egbert's star had dimmed, however, that of his mother had sparkled brightly. Emma Lanning was, apparently, a determined, hard-working woman. She had married twice since Egbert's father died in 1885. With a son and step-children to raise and finally after she had carried out her obligations at age sixty five she wanted an education so she enrolled in the Chicago Music College as a full time student, graduating four years later. In her seventies she'd learned to swim and use a typewriter. She was described as an artist of "unusual ability," a writer of poetry and children's stories. Somehow she took on a radio role as "Aunt Em" on WLS, a top station then in connection with Prairie Farmer magazine. Her "down-to-earth philosophy" and "home spun dialogue" were so popular for years her fan mail exceeds most other personalities at the station.

The picture here was taken on her eighty fifth birthday in 1937 at WLS. Mayor of Marengo, William Miller, at right had presented her with a basket of eighty-five red roses from his (their) city in honor of her long career. Son, Egbert, is on the left. She died in 1941, much mourned by her hometown and a host of radio listeners! The two pictures, including Bert in 1905, are from the files of the McHenry County Historical Society, Union where well-organized and copious material was made available for this article by the efficient staff. Few small town libraries/societies could excel the extent of their information and readiness to assist. Thank You! We enjoyed getting to know Mr. Van Alstyne despite the fact that he didn't turn out to have the connection we desired to Carroll county . . . . . Old Orchard/Chadwick and the apple trees that once covered that town site.

Years ago when able to can the microfilm of local papers, an item cropped up concerning the wedding in 1897 of a Lanark doctor, Dr. TI Packard, to Etta Van Alstyne in Chadwick. Then, somehow having learned that there was a Van Alstyne (or Aelstyne) who had written "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" I so wanted there to be a connection with our corner of Illinois . . . . Were they brother and sister? Was he inspired by the apple orchard down there in Fair Haven township? Perhaps his family had moved there while he had Gone Broadway . . . . what? He did from time to time entertain in the area such as the Lindo Theater, Freeport, summer of 1925 . . . near his family??? Search deeper, C. , which we did now and then until this fall we dug in on learning a couple years ago that Egbert was from Marengo. We head ourselves over east, too, but it was in the obituary of Etta Van Alstyne Packard who died in 1972 at age one hundred, that we learned for certain that her father was Albert S., while Egbert's father who died in 1885, was Charles.

Albert, we found in the historical material, was living in Coleta yet in 1898. Search of census/burial records found no more. Should we have looked in church records in Whiteside? No matter, because we now know that Etta and Egbert were not siblings but cousins. Both were highly gifted musically, she having gone to the Chicago Music Conservatory and to have given piano lessons in both Minnesota where she was born, and in Lanark after her marriage. Oh, if I'd have known some of this when her son, Roswell Packard, a long timie insurance agent in Lanark, was still alive. He was an eager storyteller and could have filled in many of the niches.

So that's why you got a short bio on the life of a one-time famous songwriter and from whom our only brush with fame was his cousin, a nice, neat little lady, as we recall.

But I am warning you readers that there's a couple other similar tangents to go off on. It takes time to search. So stay tuned. Meanwhile hum one of Egbert's songs in fellowship.

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