Sol Bloom

American songwriter, politician, entertainment impresario & sheet music publisher. Born March 9, 1870 Pekin, Illinois, USA. Died March 7, 1949 (aged 78) Washington, D.C., USA. He began his career as an entertainment impresario and sheet music publisher in Chicago. Bloom established his reputation in 1893 at the age of 23 while developing the mile-long Midway Plaisance at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In the 1890's, Bloom became Chicago branch manager of M. Witmark & Sons, the largest publisher of sheet music in the U.S., and by 1896 he was publishing under his own name and introducing photolithographs to make the scores more visually appealing. In 1897 he began billing himself as "Sol Bloom, the Music Man". At the turn of the 20th century, he was awarded, to much fanfare, the first musical copyright of the new century for "I Wish I Was in Dixie Land Tonight" by Raymond A. Browne. Other popular writers that were writing for him at the time included William H. Penn, Theodore Morse Leo Friedman, Matthew C. Woodward, James O'Dea, Ernest Hogan and many others. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York 1923-1949.