Kerker was born in
Herford,
Kingdom of Prussia, and began to study the cello at the age of seven. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1867, settling in
Louisville, Kentucky. Kerker played in pit orchestras at local theatres and then began to conduct. His early
operetta,
Cadets, toured the South in 1879. Kerker then moved to New York City, where he was engaged as the principal conductor at the
Casino Theatre. There, he began to add his own songs into the scores of foreign
operettas, notably
Charles Lecocq's
The Pearl of Pekin, since these works had no effective copyright in the U.S. Kerker's first complete
operetta in New York was
Castles in the Air in 1890. He wrote over 20 shows, the most successful of which were the London
musical burlesque Little Christopher Columbus (1893), and the international musical hit
The Belle of New York (1897). Other notable musicals included
An American Beauty (1896),
The Girl from Up There (1901),
Winsome Winnie (1903),
The Tourists (1906),
The White Hen (1907), and
Fascinating Flora (1907) to a book by
R. H. Burnside and
Joseph W. Herbert. In 1909, he was asked to leave Germany by authorities for having failed to perform military service in his youth. He was one of the nine founding members of
ASCAP in 1914. Kerker was married twice: first to Rose Keene whose stage name was Rose Leighton (married 1884) and second to Mattie B. Rivenberg (June 5, 1908), a show girl in the musical
Nearly a Hero who was 30 years his junior. Kerker died following an "attack of
apoplexy" at his home on 565 West 169th Street in New York City at the age of 66. ==Theater credits==