East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon)

Words and music, Brooks Bowman (1913–1937)

Like “Moonglow”, this song has been a jazz standard for decades. As a Princeton sophomore, Brooks Bowman (another great name) wrote the song for an undergraduate play called Stags At Bay. Upon graduating in 1936, he moved to Hollywood, working under contract to Selznick International Pictures. The same year Bowman returned to the east coast, intending to sign a songwriting contract and team up with another Princeton graduate. Before the contract was signed, he died in a car crash, just shy of his 24^th birthday.

I found six other songs Bowman had written, but only three I was able to listen to. They weren’t very good. Still, he is only the fourth composer (so far) of the 100 songs to have written both the words and music of the songs, the other two being Carrie Jacobs Bond and Irving Berlin.