Byron Gay

Gay was born on August 22, 1886 in Illinois to Cassius Mason Gay (1862 – 1917) and Julia Iona Fessenden Gay (1893 – 1947). He had two brothers and two sisters, one of whom he outlived by four months. Gay married Ethel May Stokes (June 19, 1893 – May 1, 1947) and had one daughter. He died at age 59 on December 22, 1945 in Tucson, Arizona and is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.[2]

Gay wrote the music for The Uplifters' Minstrels, L. Frank Baum's 1916 stage farce for The Uplifters; he also had songs in The Greenwich Village Follies of 1919 and 1921.[3]

• "Avalon"
• "Fate" (1921)[4][5]
• "Fast Asleep in Poppy Land"
• "Fire!" (Byron Gay, Richard A. Whiting) (1926) [6]
• "Four or Five Times" (Byron Gay, Marco H. Hellman) (recorded in 1928 by King Oliver)
• "Horses" (Bryon Gay, Richard A. Whiting) (1924)[7]
• "The Little Ford Rambled Right Along" (Byron Gay, C. R. Foster) (1914)
• "O (Oh!)" (Byron Gay, Arnold Johnson) (1919),[8] (a 1953 recording by Pee Wee Hunt sold a million copies)
• "Sand Dunes" (1918)
• "Song of the West"
• "The Vamp" (1919)[9]
• "Wide Open Spaces" (Byron Gay, Richard A. Whiting, Paul Whiteman) (1927)