American lyricist and composer, “Larry” Brown was born in a Newark, New Jersey, housing project, the oldest of seven children of the impoverished family of a taxi driver. He was arrested at age eleven for stealing food from a railway boxcar for his hungry siblings. Later he was jailed for more serious thefts, but on his release, he turned his life around, determined to make a living in the music world. He wrote his first song at age sixteen for Fury Records. He co-wrote some songs with Ray Bloodworth, and with Bob Crewe in the mid 1960s; then in 1970, he teamed up with Irwin Levine, fifteen years older than he. The two had great success with “Tie a Yellow Ribbon on the Ole Oak Tree” and “Knock Three Times,” both written for the duo of Tony Orlando and Dawn. The first has been recorded over 1,000 times, by such well-known singers as Dean Martin and Dolly Parton and used in several films. The 1971 song for the Partridge Family, “I Woke up in Love This Morning,” sold two million copies. Twenty of Brown’s songs have sold a million copies.

Lyricist Lew Brown, as he called himself, arrived in New York from Russia in 1898 at the age of five, the son of Jewish immigrants from Odessa. He quit high school before graduating and in 1912 wrote his first song. In the roaring twenties, he wrote songs for such Tin Pan Alley composers as Albert Von Tilzer. In 1925 he joined Buddy DeSylva and Ray Henderson in a three-man song writing partnership that produced such upbeat songs as “Button Up Your Overcoat" and “The Birth of the Blues.” The group headed for Hollywood in 1929 but became a duo when DeSylva left in 1931. Brown and Henderson continued to work together. By 1939, Brown estimated that he had written or collaborated on around 7,000 songs. In 1942, he wrote the hit “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,” which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Shortly after he retired, having written or co-written about 24 stage and film musicals. In 1956 the musical biopic “The Best Things in Life Are Free” recounted the story of the team of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson. All three (of whom the last was the only one still alive) were inducted into the Song Writers’ Hall of Fame in 1970.