Al Hoffman

Who was Al Hoffman?

Al Hoffman was a Russian born American song composer. He was a hit songwriter active in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, usually co-writing with others and responsible for number one hits through each decade, many of which are still sung and recorded today. He was posthumously made a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984. The popularity of Hoffman's song, "Mairzy Doats", co-written with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was such that newspapers and magazines wrote about the craze. Time magazine titled one article "Our Mairzy Dotage". The New York Times simply wrote the headline, "That Song".

Hoffman's songs were recorded by Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine Perry Como, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Nat "King" Cole, Tony Bennett, the Merry Macs, Sophie Tucker, Eartha Kitt, Patsy Cline, Patti Page, Bette Midler, and most everyone who was a star of that era. In October, 2007, Hoffman's "I'm Gonna Live Til I Die" was the lead single from Queen Latifah's album, "Trav'lin' Light".