Biography
Philip Braham, a British composer born in 1881, earned his enduring reputation chiefly through the jazz standard "Limehouse Blues," a piece countless performers have covered across many decades. He launched his songwriting career in the 1910s by supplying material for British stage revues, the majority of them mounted by Andre Charlot. Early on, Braham added numbers to the 1916 shows Theodore & Co. and See-Saw. For the 1918 revue Tails Up he worked with lyricists Hugh E. Wright and Douglas Furber, and in 1921 he joined Ronald Jeans and Dion Titheradge on A to Z. His closest and most sustained collaboration was with Douglas Furber, yielding both "Now That I've Found You" and the landmark 1922 song "Limehouse Blues." Gertrude Lawrence, an associate of Noel Coward, first presented "Limehouse Blues" in Andre Charlot's Revue of 1924, from which it quickly became a jazz mainstay. In 1925 Braham composed for On With the Dance, one of Coward's early stage productions, and that same year he partnered with John Hastings Turner on Bubbly. Additional lyricists with whom he worked included Eric Blore, Reginald Douglas Brownsmith, and Anthony Lowry. By the early 1930s Braham had shifted to motion pictures, acting as musical director at Wembley Studios on several films. His career ended prematurely with his death in 1934.