The History Book Club discussion

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of famous Lyricists.


Cole Porter

Some famous lyricists are:

a) Alan Jay Lerner
b) Cole Porter
c) Dorothy Fields
d) E. Y. Harburg
e) Howard Dietz
f) Ira Gershwin
g) Johnny Mercer
h) Oscar Hammerstein
i) P. G. Wodehouse
j) Robert Merrill
k) Sammy Cahn
l) Serge Gainsbourg
m) William S. Gilbert

There are so many others. Please feel free to discuss any of your favorites.

This thread was a request of Garret.

Got to add Lorenz Hart to the list.

by Frederick Nolan

This is a good biography but unfortunately the author wasn't given permission to reprint lyrics which hampered his intention of analyzing the wit and craft of the lyrics.

"If it hadn't been for Larry Hart, none of us would have felt free to write colloquial lyrics. He took the way people talked and put them into lyrics. That doesn't mean much, but in the early twenties nobody had ever done it."

Oscar Hammerstein

A master of all forms of rhyme, he was at his best writing witty, unsentimental lyrics. Some of his more famous lyrics include, "Blue Moon", "Isn't It Romantic?", "Mountain Greenery", "The Lady Is a Tramp", "Manhattan", "Where or When", "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered", "Falling in Love with Love", and "My Funny Valentine".

Others include
• "Dancing on the Ceiling"
• "Glad to Be Unhappy"
• "Have You Met Miss Jones?"
• "He Was Too Good to Me"
• "I Could Write a Book"
• "I Didn't Know What Time It Was"
• "I'll Tell The Man In The Street"
• "It Never Entered My Mind"
• "It's Easy to Remember"
• "I've Got Five Dollars"
• "I Wish I Were in Love Again"
• "Johnny One Note"
• "Little Girl Blue"
• "Lover"
• "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"
• "My Heart Stood Still"
• "My Romance"
• "A Ship Without a Sail"
• "Sing for Your Supper"
• "Spring Is Here"
• "Ten Cents a Dance"
• "There's a Small Hotel"
• "This Can't Be Love"
• "To Keep My Love Alive"
• "Where or When"
• "With a Song in My Heart"
• "You Took Advantage of Me"


by Philip Furia is a collection of essays on the great lyricists from the golden years of the "Great American Songbook." I can highly recommend this book.

http://www.songwritershalloffame.org/...
http://www.lorenzhart.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/star...

Great post Garret and thank you for the links.

One of the great lyricists Bently mentions above is Johnny Mercer. Last year was the centennial of his birth. Jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood did a fabulous documentary of Mercer "Clint Eastwood Presents: Johnny Mercer "The Dream's On Me" A Celebration of His Music" available on DVD from Amazon, and soon on Netflix.

NPR had several great shows celebrating Mercer. This one is available by podcast and features the wonderful jazz pianist and songwriter Dave Frishberg (who deserves to be in our list) and vocalist Rebecca Kilgore.


(Check out the post on Kilgore under the swing thread in music)

Thanks for that great add.

"Dorothy Fields came from a prominent show business family and became a brilliant lyricist in a male-dominated profession. She was the first woman inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and was honored with a U.S. postage stamp."

From jazzbiographies

Sandra Burlingame continues,

Her seven-year collaboration with Jimmy McHugh enjoyed its first success with the revue, Blackbirds of 1928, which featured “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” Later shows and films gave us “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “Exactly Like You” (1930), “Don’t Blame Me” (1933), and “I’m in the Mood for Love” (1935).

Fields collaborated with Jerome Kern on the Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers film Swing Time (1936), winning an Academy Award for “The Way You Look Tonight.” The clever songs included “Never Gonna Dance,” “Pick Yourself Up,” and “A Fine Romance.” Kern, whose leanings were classically European, was inspired to some of his best work here by the lively lyricist 20 years his junior.

Fields returned to Broadway and partnered with her librettist brother, Herbert, to write the book for Annie Get Your Gun and collaborate on three Cole Porter musicals. Herbert died while they were writing the book for Redhead (1959) with composer Albert Hague. The show became a commercial success and won a Tony for Musical Play and a Grammy for Musical Show Album.

Dorothy Fields
also wrote
Remind Me (Kern)
Big Spender (Coleman)
Don't Blame Me (McHugh)
I Must Have That Man (McHugh)

NPR story on her and her songs.

Great job on all of the music threads Garret - thank you.

He may not be a househould word but Nacio Herb Brown wrote lyrics for some of the great songs of the 1940s that people are still singing, including:

Singin' In the Rain
All I Do Is Dream Of You
Temptation
You Stepped Out of a Dream

What about comic lyricists?

Tom Lehrer
Mark Russell
Victor Borge

come to mind

Tom Lehrer's songs are sometimes hysterical. I remember one in particular "Cats on the Rooftops". The only one I could find on Youtube is by Oscar Brand, so maybe he wrote it instead of Lehrer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlinEE...

One of the most prolific and beloved songwriters in America. Plus, he wrote my favorite song "Laura" for the movie of the same name!!

Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World

by Glenn T. Eskew (no photo)

Synopsis:

John Herndon “Johnny” Mercer (1909–76) remained in the forefront of American popular music from the 1930s through the 1960s, writing over a thousand songs, collaborating with all the great popular composers and jazz musicians of his day, working in Hollywood and on Broadway, and as cofounder of Capitol Records, helping to promote the careers of Nat “King” Cole, Margaret Whiting, Peggy Lee, and many other singers. Mercer’s songs—sung by Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, and scores of other performers—are canonical parts of the great American songbook. Four of his songs received Academy Awards: “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” and “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.” Mercer standards such as “Hooray for Hollywood” and “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” remain in the popular imagination.

Exhaustively researched, Glenn T. Eskew’s biography improves upon earlier popular treatments of the Savannah, Georgia–born songwriter to produce a sophisticated, insightful, evenhanded examination of one of America’s most popular and successful chart-toppers. Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World provides a compelling chronological narrative that places Mercer within a larger framework of diaspora entertainers who spread a southern multiracial culture across the nation and around the world. Eskew contends that Mercer and much of his music remained rooted in his native South, being deeply influenced by the folk music of coastal Georgia and the blues and jazz recordings made by black and white musicians. At Capitol Records, Mercer helped redirect American popular music by commodifying these formerly distinctive regional sounds into popular music. When rock ’n’ roll diminished opportunities at home, Mercer looked abroad, collaborating with international composers to create transnational songs.

At heart, Eskew says, Mercer was a jazz musician rather than a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, and the interpenetration of jazz and popular song that he created expressed elements of his southern heritage that made his work distinctive and consistently kept his music before an approving audience.

One of the greats, he also had a movie career that was quite successful.

Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael

by Richard M. Sudhalter (no photo)

Synopsis:

Hoagy Carmichael was one of that remarkable group of songwriters who created the American popular song in its great age from the 1920s to the 1930s. Unlike most of the other leading songwriters of the period - such as Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, among others, all of whom were strongly New York based and directed - Carmichael's origins were in the Midwest.

A tribute to two very talented brothers who gave us unforgettable music.

Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin

by Deena Ruth Rosenberg (no photo)

Synopsis:

The 100th birthdays of George and Ira Gershwin (in 1898 and 1896, respectively) are being celebrated around the world. The centennials are the perfect occasion to reflect on the brothers' rich legacy to American theater music. "The Man I Love," "Fascinating Rhythm," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "A Foggy Day"--together they wrote 700 songs and dozens of shows that defined an age and revolutionized the musical theater. Essential to any consideration of their achievement is Deena Rosenberg's Fascinating Rhythm, the only book to closely examine the brothers'extraordinary collaboration.

First published in 1991, this pioneering work--which grew out of extensive interviews with Ira Gershwin and draws on much unpublished material from his archives--provides an interpretation and critical history of the Gershwin opus. Focusing on the major songs and shows and on the creative process that produced them, Rosenberg traces the development of the Gershwins' vocabulary, voice, subject, and viewpoint as they evolved from song to song. She illuminates how words and music work together in each song to create a small one-act play that encompasses a satisfying emotional and dramatic action.

Rosenberg also expertly places the Gershwins in their creative and social context, highlighting their innovations, their own growth as mature artists, and their relationship to their times. And she outlines Ira's productive career following the untimely death of his brother in 1937.

Filled with musical examples, Iyrics, and photographs, this rich portrait will fascinate any musical theater lover.

Cole Porter, College Man

A recently discovered trove in Kennebunk, Maine, of notebooks, lyrics, and sheet music, confirms that the composer of Kiss Me Kate and Top Hat was already hard at work on his future while laboring over assignments in sophomore English.
November 1992
by Robert Kimball

http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.co...

Source: Yale Alumni Magazine

For those of you in NYC:

This sounds like a special event: - February 26, 2019

https://www.onedayu.com/events/detail...