Ted Snyder

Theodore Frank Snyder was born on August 15, 1881, in Freeport, Illinois, and grew up in Boscobel, Wisconsin. A composer, lyricist, music publisher, and Broadway performer, he became one of the prominent figures in American popular music during the early twentieth century. He died on July 16, 1965, in Woodland Hills, California.

Snyder learned piano as a child and, as a young man, returned to Illinois to work as a café pianist in Chicago before taking a position with a music publishing firm. He relocated to New York in 1904 after spending time in Chicago promoting musical compositions. By 1907 he had placed his first composition with a publisher, and in 1908 he established his own music publishing business in New York City. That same year, his work reached Broadway for the first time through the musical Funabashi, for which he contributed as a lyricist. In 1909, Snyder hired Irving Berlin as a staff writer at his company, and the two eventually became business partners. In 1914, Snyder was among the founding members of ASCAP.

His Broadway career extended across several productions. In 1910, Snyder and Berlin performed and sang their own material in the musical Up and Down Broadway. He subsequently contributed as a composer to the revue Fashions of 1924, and his stage credits also include Gaby, Hell, and Temptations. Decades later, his song "Who's Sorry Now?" was featured in the 1999 revue Fosse.

Among Snyder's most enduring compositions is "The Sheik of Araby," written in 1921, which was recorded by Duke Ellington in 1932, Benny Goodman in 1937, and The Beatles during their 1962 Decca audition. His most celebrated work, "Who's Sorry Now?," was written in 1923 in collaboration with Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. The song reached number one on the UK Singles Chart for Connie Francis in 1958 and climbed to number four on the American Billboard charts. In 2000, the Recording Industry Association of America named it one of the Songs of the Century. As of 2007, Snyder's compositions had been used in approximately twenty-two motion pictures, ranging from the 1926 film The Sheik of Araby to the Marx Brothers' 1946 production A Night in Casablanca, the 1979 film All That Jazz, and the 2002 film The Good Girl.

In 1930, Snyder left the songwriting business and moved to California, where he opened a nightclub in Hollywood. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. In 1985, his music copyright heirs were party to the Supreme Court case Mills Music, Inc. v. Snyder.