Composer and lyricist Dana Suesse was a child prodigy, giving her first concert, a Rachmaninoff prelude, at the age of nine. At 16 she moved to New York and began composing songs. Two years later the hit songs "Syncopated Love Song" and "Ho-Hum" followed and soon she was playing piano in Paul Whiteman's Orchestra. After several years of "academic" composing she began to compose popular songs, among them the music for a nightclub revue, The Casa Manana Show as well as the scores for two movies, Young Man With A Horn and Sweet Surrender. For a period Suesse also studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger before ultimately returning to composing full-time.