LAKE, Bonnie

Bonnie Louise Lake was a big band-era songwriter. She wrote several popular songs of the 1930s and 1940s and continued composing and occassionally singing into the 1960s. Lake began her songwriting career as a teenager in the mid-1930s. In 1935, the Dorsey Brothers recorded her tune “I’ve Got Your Number,” and Benny Goodman recorded “Sandman,” co-written with Ralph Reed. The Dorsey Brothers would adopt “Sandman” as their theme song, and it remained so for Jimmy Dorsey in his early years as a solo bandleader. In 1936, Louis Armstrong recorded “Red Nose,” a song Lake co-wrote with her sister Marion.