Moe Jaffe
American songwriter and bandleader
Moe Jaffe (October 23, 1901 – December 2, 1972) was an American songwriter and bandleader who composed more than 250 songs. He is best known for six: "Collegiate", "The Gypsy in My Soul", "If I Had My Life to Live Over", "If You Are But a Dream", "Bell Bottom Trousers", and "I'm My Own Grandpa".
His first success, Collegiate, is considered a "quintessential flapper song". Premiering in 1925, it was a theme for Harpo Marx as the Professor in Animal Crackers; played by Chico Marx in the movie Horse Feathers; and covered by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians.
Early life and education
Jaffe was born into a Jewish family in Vilna in the Russian Empire (now Vilnius, Lithuania). Shortly after his birth, the family emigrated to America and settled in Keyport, New Jersey.
After graduating from Keyport High School, Jaffe worked his way through the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (class of 1923) and the University of Pennsylvania Law School (class of 1926) by playing piano and leading a campus dance band, Jaffe's Collegians.
Career
It was the band's theme song, "Collegiate", that turned him toward Tin Pan Alley.
First success: "Collegiate"
Written by Jaffe and fellow student Nat Bonx, "Collegiate" was well known on the campus when Fred Waring (a Pennsylvania State grad) brought his "Pennsylvanians" to play at the university's annual Ivy Ball. Waring received so many requests for the song that he assumed it was published.
“Moe Jaffe” enters the record as american songwriter and bandleader. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jaffe, American and songwriter can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6889983. VIAF identifies the subject as 2654639. The Library of Congress control number is no2002027328. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1972, 1925 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Moe Jaffe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.