Ben Oakland

Who was Ben Oakland?

Ben Oakland was an American composer, lyricist and pianist most active from the 1920s through the 1940s. He composed mainly for Broadway and vaudeville, though he also worked on several Hollywood scores including for the film My Little Chickadee.

Oakland often composed music only, collaborating with lyricists including Oscar Hammerstein II, Bob Russell, Milton Drake, L. Wolfe Gilbert, and Artie Shaw. Notable compositions include "Java Jive", "I'll Take Romance", and "I'm A Hundred Percent For You".

The two songs that Oakland wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II are "I'll Take Romance" and "A Mist Over the Moon." The latter, which was written for a 1938 picture called The Lady Objects won Hammerstein and Oakland an Oscar nomination. The former, which was written for a 1937 film starring Grace Moore, won no awards but is frequently performed. June Christy sang it, to an arrangement by Pete Rugolo, on the 1954 album Something Cool.

He collaborated with Artie Shaw and Milton Drake on the love song "If It's You" introduced by Tony Martin in the 1942 Marx Brothers' picture The Big Store.