User:Wfbrooks/D. W. Cooper

D. W. Cooper (June 8, 1893 – November 5, 1977) was a music publisher in Boston active between 1915 and 1920.

Biography
David Wolf Cooper was born in Kovno, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania) to Harris and Gertie (sometimes Etta) Cooper. His family emigrated to Boston in 1898, joining an extensive community of Jewish immigrants, and David became a naturalized citizen in 1903. Harris Cooper was a plumber, and in 1940 David indicated that his education ended with the sixth grade; yet his first employment, at the age of 16, was as an office boy in a law firm. By 1914 he was in the music business as a clerk in a Boston publishing firm, Krey Music Co. Within a year he had founded his own company, copyrighting his first publication, “Jess Willard, the hero of the day” on April 14, 1915. He married Helen Litchfield on September 27, 1915; the couple eventually had three children. The D. W. Cooper Publishing Co. (later the Cooper Music Co.) continued in various Boston locations until 1925, although its last publications were in September, 1919. From 1925 Cooper himself worked in sales and later management with various refrigeration and air conditioning firms, initially dividing his time between Quincy, Massachusetts, and West Palm Beach, Florida. As late as 1928, however, the West Palm Beach city directory listed him as manager of the Plamore Music Co. After 1935 Cooper remained in the Boston area, first in Milton, then in Quincy, eventually becoming a vice-president of the Boston Filter Co. After his retirement (probably in 1965) he evidently moved back to Florida, where he died twelve years later.

Publishing
The D. W. Cooper Publishing Co. was a relatively small concern that served local communities, though it had larger aspirations. It issued about forty titles in five years; its fortunes peaked in April 1918, when it moved to 224 Tremont Street, close to the Boston offices of major Tin Pan Alley companies. Because its existence roughly coincided with World War I an unusually large percentage (one-third) of its titles were war-related, including Julia Smith's "Allegiance," possibly the first commercial publication that set the pledge to the flag.

Cooper seems to have been somewhat of an opportunist, exploiting local contacts and local communities when possible. In addition to Smith's song, Cooper issued Bert Potter’s late “101st Regiment U. S. A.”; Potter and Smith had both previously published with Krey, where Cooper may have befriended them. Other composers (May Greene, Billy Lang, Robert Levenson, Julia Smith), were members of the immigrant community in which Cooper was raised; they were further linked by religion (Levenson, Greene, and Cooper were Jewish) and by social organizations (Levenson and Cooper were Masons). The covers to Cooper's publications were often designed by locals (E. S. Fisher, Vincent Plunkett) or depicted Boston landmarks ("A-M-E-R-I-C-A," by Lang and Greene, features a photograph of "The Appeal to the Great Spirit"). Among Cooper's publications were the first seven songs by Jimmy McHugh, who went on to have a celebrated career in American popular music.

Several of Cooper’s issues were sold on to New York firms; others (by Bert Lowe and Julia Smith) were republications motivated by the excitement of the war. Two marches, by Potter and by Oliver E. Story, celebrated local pride in Boston’s soldiers. On at least one occasion Cooper’s entrepreneurism caused him problems; when he issued “Keep the Love-Light Burning in the Window 'til the Boys Come Marching Home” (by Jack Caddigan and Jimmy McHugh) he was successfully sued by Chappell & Co. for infringing their copyright on “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” But Cooper was resilient: two months later he copyrighted the same music with a new title, “Keep the Love-Light Shining …,” and shortly afterwards he sold the rights to the New York publisher J. W. Stern.

Cooper also composed music for at least five songs, including the moderately prescient “My Daddy’s Coming Home,” copyrighted two days before the armistice and issued almost immediately in a special “overnight edition.” For some titles he wrote both words and music; for others he collaborated with Levenson, Vincent C. Plunkett, and others. His career, overall, is a good instance of the kind of small-scale operation that characterised popular music publishing in many American cities outside of the industry's New York, Tin-Pan-Alley center.

Further reading and digital archives

 * Frederick Vogel: World War I Songs: A History and Dictionary of Popular American Patriotic Tunes, with Over 300 Complete Lyrics (McFarland & Company, 1995).
 * Bernard S. Parker: World War I Sheet Music (2 vols., McFarland & Company, 2007).
 * IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana
 * World War I Sheet Music (Brown University)