Vocalist Al Jolson premiered this number in 1920, and it scored two positions on the charts the following year:

• Al Jolson (1921, vocal, #2)
• Art Hickman and His Orchestra (1921, #11)

From his first hit record in 1912 until the decline of his career in the 1930s, almost anything Jolson performed turned to gold. Just his name associated with a song almost guaranteed success. Jolson was one of the first artists to capitalize on his popularity, cutting in on composer credits and royalties--hence the reason Jolson gets top billing on the credits to “Avalon.”

Most likely Vincent Rose deserves credit for the music, but not completely. The opening melody of the tune is actually a lift from Giacomo Puccini’s aria “E Lucevan Le Stelle,” from the opera Tosca. Rose merely changed the melody from minor to major and added some melody bits of his own. But it was an obvious enough lift that Puccini’s publishers, G. Rocordi, sued the composers and the publisher in 1921 and were awarded $25,000 in punitive damages and all future royalties.

The original music shows only the names of Jolson and Rose. At some point in time DeSylva’s name was added. It is possible that he did have a hand in the lyrics, as he wrote lyrics to many of the songs performed by and purportedly composed by Jolson.

“Avalon” is practically an advertisement for the resort town on Catalina Island off the coast of California which was a popular resort destination for the film community of Hollywood. The song not only relates missing the place “beside the bay” but dreaming “from dusk ‘til dawn” of someone left behind. One of the cleverest parts of the lyric is the rhyme “I’ll have to travel-on, to Av-a-lon.”