The Akron native wrote some of the catchiest songs of the early 20th century while cranking out hits for Tin Pan Alley music publishers in New York. Clarke was the lyricist for more than 100 tunes, including classics Second Hand Rose, Am I Blue? and Ragtime Cowboy Joe, and collaborated with such luminaries as Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and Ethel Waters.
Despite being a celebrity in the halcyon years of Victrolas and sheet music, he is virtually unknown today in his hometown — even though his compositions continue to be recorded by modern artists and featured in movies and television programs.
It all began here.
New York natives Mary and William A. Clarke welcomed baby son Grant on May 14, 1891, in the bustling canal town of Akron. William, an illustrator, managed the advertising department at Akron's B.F. Goodrich Co., while Mary was a stage actress.
The infant's first home was in the Windsor Hotel, a four-story inn at South Broadway and East Mill Street, where owner Ferdinand Schumacher strictly prohibited alcohol. That taboo was a great irony in Clarke's adult life.
The family moved to 104 Oakdale Ave. and later resided at 509 E. Market St. before settling into a luxury room at the Barberton Inn. Clarke attended Akron High School, the forerunner of Central High School.
As a teenager, Clarke acted in Ohio stock theater, where he realized that music was his calling. The boy could play a mean piano and knew how to turn a phrase, so he packed a suitcase in 1910 and moved to Manhattan.
Clarke was a happy-go-lucky character — a tall, thin fellow with a crazy wave of hair and a razor-sharp wit.
Hungry in the city
''When Grant Clarke came to New York with nothing but an idea that he could write songs, he found that the idea wouldn't keep him from starving and he started to go home,'' Broadway columnist O.O. McIntyre recalled a few years later. ''On the way to the train, he overheard two men on Broadway say that Bert Williams was on the hunt of a new song.''
Overnight, Clarke composed a ditty for Williams, the only African-American in the cast of The Ziegfeld Follies. Written in an Akron white boy's interpretation of black dialect, the song Dat's Harmony concluded: ''Wid all due credit to a big brass band, de sweetest music in de land is when you hear de sizzle from de fryin' pan. Man, dat's harmony!''
Williams listened to the song, made a few changes and agreed to use it in his act, where it became a major hit. For his work, Clarke was paid $1,000 (about $23,600 today) and caught his big break on Broadway.
Clarke's next big song was Ragtime Cowboy Joe, collaborating with musicians Lewis F. Muir and Maurice Abrahams. The lyrics are about a cowboy — ''a high-falutin', scootin', shootin', son of a gun from Arizona'' — who sings ragtime music to his cows and sheep. Singer Bob Roberts had a No. 1 hit with it in 1912, but today's listeners are more likely to recall the 1959 version by Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Next up was the novelty song He'd Have to Get Under — Get Out and Get Under, about a motorist who has to keep repairing his automobile when he'd rather be romancing his sweetheart. Singer Al Jolson had a smash with it in 1913. Jolson later had success in 1918 with another Clarke song, Everything Is Peaches Down in Georgia, and sang two Clarke songs, Dirty Hands, Dirty Face and Mother of Mine, I Still Have You, in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer.
Clarke wrote with many composers, including Milton Ager, Harry Akst, Irving Berlin, Fred Fisher, James Hanley, George Meyer and Harry Warren. In 1914, he became a charter member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).
Marriage proposal
That year, Clarke met Garnet Patten, 17, of Kokomo, Ind., who was visiting an older sister in New York. Clarke, 23, became smitten with the girl and hopped a train to Indiana three months later to propose marriage.
He surprised Patten at her front door in mid-December.
''I want you to marry me,'' he told her. ''Marry me here and now, and we'll both be back in New York in time for a glorious Christmas dinner.''
Her father, the Rev. Arthur Patten, married the couple in the living room, and they caught a train back to the East Coast.
The young bride wasn't really prepared for the big city.
After a year of wedded bliss, she began to get jealous of women in her husband's songs. She balked at titles such as You're a Dangerous Girl, You Can't Get Along With 'Em or Without 'Em and There's a Little Bit of Bad in Every Good Little Girl.
When Garnet Clarke filed for divorce in 1919, newspapers dubbed her ''The Tired-of-Me Girl,'' after Clarke's hit Tired of Me: ''Tired of me, tired of me. Sorry is all you say. Just like a toy, children enjoy. Loved and then thrown away.''
Clarke's battle with the bottle must have played a role in the marriage's failure. He frequently drank himself into a stupor at the Blue Ribbon Bar in New York. Tin Pan Alley composers couldn't get him to leave, so they sometimes worked out songs on the tavern's old piano.
One time, Clarke and pal Tony Hughes went on an all-day bender at a hotel. Columnist O.O. McIntyre recounted that Clarke looked out the hotel window and happened to see the Ringling Bros. circus unloading.
''Ooh, looka!'' he exclaimed. ''Elephants and monkeys!''
According to McIntyre: ''The panic-stricken playmate sent for the house physician and Clarke was confined to an asylum! And not until 10 days later could they prove that Clarke wasn't seein' things, but a real load of animals.''
The inebriation didn't seem to show in Clarke's work. His lyrics were sharp, and his biggest success was yet to come.
Singer Fanny Brice introduced Clarke's famous song Second Hand Rose, co-written with James Hanley, in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1921. ''I'm wearing second hand hats, second hand clothes,'' she sang. ''That's why they call me Second Hand Rose.'' Barbra Streisand reprised it in the 1968 movie Funny Girl.
Clarke's other signature tune, Am I Blue?, co-written with Harry Akst, was in the 1929 movie On With the Show. Ethel Waters sang the show-stopper: ''Am I blue? Am I blue? Ain't these tears in these eyes telling you?''
Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Ricky Nelson, Brenda Lee, Bette Midler, Cher and Linda Ronstadt are among the many singers who recorded it.
Concentrating on movies, Clarke left New York and moved to Hollywood. His songs appeared in more than 20 movies from 1929 to 1930, but it was a frantic pace that couldn't last.
On May 16, 1931, two days after his 40th birthday, a sickly Clarke tried to walk to a friend's bungalow after dark. He never made it. The lyricist fell to the ground and died of alcohol-induced heart failure.
The nation's newspapers barely mentioned Clarke's passing 80 years ago. That anonymity continues to this day.
Despite more than 100 songs, Clarke might be the most famous Akron native that no one knows.
Mark J. Price is a Beacon Journal copy editor. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or send email to mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
