Biography
Roy Turk, an American lyricist active throughout the 1920s and the opening years of the 1930s, supplied lyrics for numerous popular songs that found their way into the era’s Broadway productions and Hollywood musical films. He entered the world in N.Y.C. in 1892, attended CCNY, and later fulfilled a military obligation in WWI. Once released from service, he began his professional life by composing material for vaudeville acts and working with publishing firms; his initial success arrived with the 1919 song “Oh How I Laugh When I Think How I Cried About You.” Modest further successes followed for several seasons, and the earliest theatrical outing to incorporate his work, Plantation Revue (1922), failed to attract audiences. Momentum arrived in 1923 with Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1923, a production that furnished two of his well-received numbers and coincided with two additional independent hits, thereby anchoring his reputation. From that juncture until the year preceding his death, Turk maintained a steady output of several compositions annually, among them contributions to the 1930 motion pictures In Gay Madrid, Free and Easy, and Children of Pleasure. Among his most enduring pieces are “Aggravatin’ Papa” (1922), “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” (1926), “I’ll Get By” (1928), “Mean to Me” (1929), “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home,” “I Don’t Know Why,” Bing Crosby’s theme song “Where the Blue of the Night” (1931), “Love, You Funny Thing” (1932), and the last hit of his lifetime, “I Couldn’t Tell Them What to Do” (1933). Although composer Fred Ahlert served as his primary partner, Turk also joined forces at various points with Harry Akst, George Meyer, Maceo Pinkard, J. Russel Robinson, and Charles Tobias.