Jack Mills

Jack Mills, founder of the Mills Music Publishing Company, who introduced many popular songs over a 50‐year span, died Friday in Hollywood, Fla. He was 87 years old.

He was born on New York's Lower East Side of Russian parents. As a boy he sold neckties and began a lifelong devotion to the theatrical stars. He got a job as a song plugger and began working for several music publishing companies.

Mr. Mills got his big break in 1921 when the tenor Enrico Caruso died. He heard an unknown songwriter's composition called “They Needed a Songbird in Heaven, So God Took Caruso Away.” Mr. Mills published the song on his own, it was a hit arid he had a stake.

He started a company, later to he known as Mills Music Inc., and among his first hits were “Oh, Mr. Gallagher, Oh, Mr. Shean” and “Girl of My Dreams.” Around him he gathered a group of top lyricists and composers, among them Leroy Anderson, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh, Morton Gould, Fats Waller and Mitchell Parrish.

An interviewer once asked him how the name, “Tin Pan Alley” had originated. He replied:

“Funny, t never thought of that. It was called that when the music publishers Ii were on 14th Street, when they moved uptown to 28th, and on up around Times Square. It still sticks.

Before his retirement in 1965, Mr. Mills sold his company for $5 million. At that time, Mills Music Inc. was ore of the nation's largest independent music publishing companies. It was noted for such popular standards as ‘'Star Dust,” “Who's Sorry Now?” and a number Mr Mills had collaborated on with Ed Ros, and William Rasking, lyricists. Written in 1918, the song was kept before the public mainly through the efforts of George Burns. It was entitled “I'll Buy the Ring and Change Your Name to Mine.”

Mr. Mills was a director of the National Music Publishers Association and a sponsor of Brandeis University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was a member of the Friars, the Lambs and the Lotos Club.

He is survived by his wife, Estelle; two sons, Martin of Los Angeles and Stanley of New York City; a daughter, Mrs. William Alpert of Woodmere, L.I., and five grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held today at 11:30 A.M. at Frank E. Campbell's, 81st Street and Madison Avenue.

-By ALFRED E. CLARK, MARCH 26, 1979, The New York Times