Don Raye on AllMovie

Don Raye only ever made one acting appearance onscreen, though that was in the movie that put him on the map as a major Hollywood composer. It was as a songwriter that the ex-dancer made an indelible impression on American popular culture across several generations of filmgoers, all from a four-year stretch of films that he helped score during the early '40s. He was born Donald MacRae Wilhoite Jr.; his father was the author of that classic sentimental song "Mother." He was a natural talent as a dancer, winning awards as a boy, and he entered vaudeville in his teens, using the name Don Raye, as a singer and dancer. Raye first began writing songs for his own act and he later realized that his work was not only good enough to sell to others, but that this might constitute a better living than the vaudeville stage. By 1935, at age 26, he entered the forward rank of young composers, collaborating with the likes of Sammy Cahn, Saul Chaplin, and Jimmie Lunceford. By the end of the decade, he was under contract as a songwriter and saw early success with the song "Down the Road a Piece," which became a pop and jazz standard, covered by Freddie Slack, Glenn Miller, and a host of other stars of the period. As early as 1939, the Andrews Sisters were cutting his music, beginning with "Well All Right! (Tonight's the Night)" in early 1939, which charted as a single. Raye's words seemed to fit in perfectly with a new, bold, brash side of the trio's sound, and in 1940, he was brought out to Hollywood to work on their first feature film, Argentine Nights. Collaborating with Hughie Prince and Vic Schoen, he came up with a song called "Rhumboogie," which opened up a new phase in the trio's work: the Andrews Sisters, in their film appearances as well as on their records, became the singing representatives of boogie-woogie. Raye had a special knack for adapting slang expressions and alliterative words to catchy musical hooks which, when put in the hands of Schoen as music arranger and the Andrews Sisters as singers, made them irresistible to pop and swing audiences alike. "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" became the first in a string of seemingly ready-made hits for the trio, similar to "Down the Road a Piece" but more directly suited to the persona of the trio. It also helped to turn Argentine Nights -- hardly a groundbreaking piece of cinema -- into a hit, as people bought tickets for the songs as much as for the Andrews Sisters. Raye's early work directly with the Andrews Sisters and Schoen went beyond writing songs. He became the conductor of Vic Schoen and His Orchestra on-stage when the group made its first tour, while Schoen stayed seated in the back row, playing trumpet and trombone. This combo toured the country, both with and without the Andrews Sisters as headliners (and sometimes with Henny Youngman on the bill as well), and it got excellent reviews. For his second film project with the Andrews Sisters, Buck Privates -- which was also a starring vehicle for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello -- Raye provided the group with a pair of bouncy, slang-oriented classics that were among the defining songs of the 1940s, "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" (which was nominated for an Oscar) and "Bounce Me Brother, With a Solid Four." Also present in the score and co-authored by Raye was an exquisite period patriotic number, "You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith." And Raye appeared in the movie, playing the small role of Dick Burnette, and he can be seen dancing with the trio in one scene. Thus, Buck Privates had everything, excellent slapstick humor, good singing, a pumping beat on the rhythm numbers, highly topical patriotism, and a sense of humor which was embodied in the songs. It was Universal's biggest hit of 1941, and the jokes, comedy routines, and the songs even generated repeat business, which was relatively rare in those days. The studio was sold on everyone involved, including Don Raye. Throughout the early '40s, Raye supplied a steady stream of songs to the Andrews Sisters, as well as to the films of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello and to other Universal productions, including Hellzapoppin' and Murder in the Blue Room. Beginning later in 1941, he partnered at Universal with Gene de Paul (who later achieved fame for his collaboration with Johnny Mercer on the Broadway musical Li'l Abner) on such movies as In the Navy, San Antonio Rose, Keep 'Em Flying, Ride 'Em Cowboy, Reveille With Beverly, and Crazy House. One of Raye's biggest successes was also one of his most difficult jobs of selling a song, "I'll Remember April" -- Raye had written it after meeting a woman named Pat Johnson and falling in love with her, and she had helped him with the words; the ballad ran counter to his reputation for boogie-woogie numbers, however, and it took a lot of politicking to get it into the Abbott and Costello movie Ride 'Em Cowboy. Even then, it only caught on slowly, through a lot of help from Jack Kapp of Decca Records, a subsequent single by Kitty Carlisle, and then a recording by Bing Crosby, before it finally broke through, three years later than anyone predicted. During the mid- to late '40s, Raye and de Paul wrote the original numbers used in such movies as Samuel Goldwyn's production of A Song Is Born and Walt Disney's So Dear to My Heart and Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Raye retired from full-time movie work and most of his songwriting activities in 1949, though his songs continued to get used in movies into the 1960s, including Disney's Alice in Wonderland, José Ferrer's The Great Man, Arthur Ripley's Thunder Road, and Don Siegel's The Killers.