Ira gershwin biography lyrics a-z
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Ira Gershwin
BIO
Ira Gershwin, the first songwriter to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, was born in New York City on December 6, 1896. In 1917 The Evening Sun published his first song ("You May Throw All The Rice You Desire But Please Friends, Throw No Shoes"). Four years later Ira enjoyed his first major stage success, Two Little Girls in Blue, written with another Broadway newcomer, Vincent Youmans. In 1924 Ira and his brother, George, created the smash hit Lady Be Good and went on to continue their remarkable collaboration through a dozen major stage scores, producing such standards as "Fascinating Rhythm," "The Man I Love," "S' Wonderful," "Embraceable You," "I Got Rhythm," "But Not For Me" and others far too numerous to mention. During his long career, Ira also enjoyed productive collaborations with such songwriters as Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Kurt Weill, Burton Lane and Jerome Kern, with whom he created his grea
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Gain insight into the life of Ira Gershwin, the man behind some of the most memorable lyrics of the Great American Songbook. Biographer Michael Owen reveals the life of this remarkable American, the son of first-generation immigrants, who has often been in the shadow of his brother George Gershwin.
The first lyricist to win the pris Prize, Ira Gershwin (1896–1983) has been hailed as one of the masters of the Great American Songbook, a period which covers songs written largely for huvudgata and Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s. Now, in the first full-length biography devoted to his life, Michael Owen draws on extensive archival sources to craft a rich portrait of the modest man who penned the words to such well-loved songs as “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Owen’s book celebrates George and Ira Gershwin’s collaboration and Ira’s extensive work with other songwriters. Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words brings the publicity shy
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George Gershwin biography
from classical.net (images added)
George Gershwin! His name conjures memories and nostalgic imaginings of the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, flappers, musicals tumbling forth in glorious profusion from his creative, fertile imagination. Gershwin represented all this, of course, and so much more: his serious compositions, which confounded the critics at first performances, remain highly popular in the concert repertoire, and his stage and film songs continue to be jazz and vocal standards. Gershwin’s music was his personal digestion of European, jazz, and black styles, characterized by melodies at once catchy and beautiful, accentuated by wonderfully complex rhythmic patterns. He was a bundle of energy, a school dropout at fifteen whose wrote the enormously successful Swanee at nineteen, a playboy who rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous of two continents, a natural athlete, a painter of considerable talent, a generous, gregarious man with