According to the Internet sources given below, Percy Wenrich was an American composer of popular music born in Joplin, Missouri. His father was postmaster and his mother was a gifted amateur pianist who taught him piano and organ at an early age. Influenced both by "classic" and the then prevalent folk ragtime music, he began writing his own compositions, his father helping out with the lyrics. He acquired the sobriquet "The Joplin Kid" whilst playing around the Joplin bars (a double meaning for either his home town Scott Joplin or both). His first published work L'Inconnu (1897) was printed when he was just 17. In 1901 he studied music at the Chicago Musical College at the same continuing to write popular music. Whilst in Chicago, two works were published: Ashy Africa (1903) and Just Because I'm From Missouri (1903)
In his early years, although writing in many genres, his ragtime music made the greatest impact with such titles as Peaches and Cream (1905) and The Smiler (1905). In or around 1907, he met and married Dolly Connolly (1888-1965), a vaudeville performer. From the 1910s until the 1920s, Wenrich both wrote for and toured with Dolly Connolly and he also accompanied her when she was a recording star with Columbia Records. Although he wrote mostly for her he still found time to write a number of stage musicals. In 1930 they both retired to New York. He, too, was another prolific composer with a penchant for pseudonyms, the most often used being Earl la Farge.

Websites:
	Percy Wenrich	Biography and list of works by "Perfessor" Bill Edwards