not care for rock music, which he said was composed not of "melodies but maladies." Gordon told the Los Angeles Times that by 1960 the vogue for rhymed words and hummable melodies had passed, "So I became a tennis pro. I have many lives." Gordon's obituary claimed that he wrote the Abbott and Costello baseball comedy routine, "Who's on First?." This claim was never made by Gordon when he was alive, and others have also claimed authorship. The team perfected the routine after they formally teamed in 1936. Gordon is noted for his contribution to music and lyrics of the Americana genre. For examples it was commonly thought that his song Two Brothers was a folk song about the civil war. For several years before his death he was writing a musical about Sigmund Freud. Death Irving Gordon died of multiple myeloma cancer in Malibu, California. He was survived by two sons. Partial selection of his published songs "Allentown Jail" "Be Anything, But Darling Be Mine" "Blue Prelude" (lyrics by Gordon Jenkins; music by Joe Bishop) "Delaware" (Perry Como hit vocal) "Mama From The Train" (Patti Page hit vocal) "Me, Myself and I" (Billie Holiday hit vocal, co-written with Allen Roberts and Alvin S. Kaufman) "Mister and Mississippi" (Patti Page hit vocal) "Nine Tenths of the Tennessee River" (Moon Mullican country blues ballad) "Prelude to a Kiss" (lyrics by Gordon; music by Duke Ellington and Irving Mills) "Two Brothers" (Civil War Song) "Unforgettable" (major hit for Nat King Cole, Grammy Award in 1992) "What Will I Tell My Heart" (Bing Crosby hit vocal) "Sinner or Saint" (1952) "Sorta on the Border" (1953) "The Kentuckian Song" (Eddy Arnold vocal from the Burt Lancaster film The Kentuckian, 1955) "Rollin' Stone" (Perry Como vocal) "Too Fat For the Chimney" (1953) (Gisele Mackenzie, recorded on "Christmas Songs For Bad Little Boys & Girls"). Note - his Original last name was spelled Goldner. His grandmother was from a part of Austria-Hungary now in Slovakia. References 1915 births 1996 deaths Jewish American songwriters Songwriters from New York (state) Grammy Award winners 20th-century American musicians Deaths from cancer in California Deaths from multiple myeloma 20th-century American Jews