The sheik of araby louis prima biography

1921 song with music by Ted Snyder and lyrics by Harry B. Smith and Francis Wheeler

"The Sheik of Araby" is a song that was written in 1921 by Harry B.

Smith and Francis Wheeler, with music by Ted Snyder. It was composed in response to the popularity of the Rudolph Valentino feature film The Sheik.

"The Sheik of Araby" was a Tin Pan Alley hit, and was also adopted by early jazz bands, especially in New Orleans, making it a jazz standard.

The sheik

It was a well recognized part of popular culture. A verse also appears in the novel The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1926, Fleischer Studios released a cartoon with this song, recorded in Phonofilm, as part of their Song Car-Tunes series,^[1] and a live action short with this title was filmed in Phonofilm in the UK, directed by Miles Mander.^[2]

Origin

In 1925, composer Ted Snyder said that the song's original title was "The Rose of Araby".

The Indianapolis Star reported,