Alec Wilder (born Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder in Rochester, New York, February 16, 1907; d. Gainesville, Florida, December 24, 1980) was an American composer. His family was prominent in Rochester; a downtown building (at the "Four Corners") bears the family's name. As a young boy, he travelled to New York City with his mother and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel. It would later be his home for the last 40 or so years of his life. He attended several prep schools, unhappily, as a teenager. Around this time, he hired a lawyer and essentially "divorced" himself from his family, gaining for himself some portion of the family fortune. He was largely self-taught as a composer; he studied briefly at his hometown's Eastman School of Music in the 1920s, but left without completing his degree. While there, he edited a humor magazine and scored music for short films directed by James Sibley Watson. Wilder was eventually awarded an honorary degree in 1973. He was good friends with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and other luminaries of the American popular music canon. Among the popular songs he wrote or co-wrote were "I'll Be Around" (a hit for the Mills Brothers), "While We're Young" (recorded by Peggy Lee and many others), and "It's So Peaceful in the Country". He also wrote many songs for the cabaret artist Mabel Mercer, including "Have You Ever Crossed Over to Sneden's?" In addition to writing popular songs, Wilder also composed classical pieces for exotic combinations of orchestral instruments. The Alec Wilder Octet, including Eastman classmate Mitch Miller on oboe, recorded several of his originals for Brunswick Records in 1939. His classical numbers, which often had off-beat, humorous titles (The Hotel Detective Registers), were strongly influenced by jazz. Sinatra conducted an album of Wilder's classical music. Wilder also arranged a series of Christmas Carols for Tubachristmas. Wilder authored the definitive book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 (1973). He was also featured in a series based on the book aired on South Carolina Public Radio in the mid '70s. With lyricist Loonis McGlohon, he composed songs for the Land of Oz theme park in Banner Elk, North Carolina. Wilder loved puzzles: he created his own cryptic crosswords, and could spend hours with a jigsaw puzzle. He also loved to talk (he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the world) and most of all, laugh. Displeased with how Peggy Lee improvised the ending of While We're Young, he wrote her a note: "The next time you come to the bridge [of the song], jump!" He often maintained that music publishers "stole everything", but in a reflective moment, noted that as badly as he had been treated by the powers-that-be of the music industry, black artists had been treated worse. Wilder is buried in a Catholic cemetery in Avon, New York, outside Rochester.
External links
- Alec Wilder page from Classical Net site
- Alec Wilder Collection, 1939-2000, from The New York Public Library site
- Alec Wilder Archive at Eastman School of Music
- Alec Wilder Centennial site
- 100 records to celebrate 100 years of Alec Wilder...and more!
