Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics for some of the most enduring songs in the Great American Songbook, including "I Got Rhythm," "S'Wonderful," "Embraceable You," "Love is Here to Stay," and "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." Biographer Michael Owen talks about Ira's collaboration with his brother George, his writing process, and the line he added to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Later, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead remembers drummer Roy Haynes.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What songs did Ira Gershwin write?
Michael Owen, welcome to Fresh Air. I love the Gershwin's music, so it's a pleasure to be able to talk with you about it. I opened with Lady Be Good because I think it ties together the early part of Ira Gershwin's career with the part in the 1950s when he wasn't really writing much. And his career, his songs, like, needed a boost.
And Ella Fitzgerald's Gershwin Songbook really helped give him that boost. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of both of those ends, you know, the Lady Be Good musical and the Ella Fitzgerald Gershwin songbook?
Chapter 2: How did Ira Gershwin's career evolve?
Thank you, first off, for having me on. 1924 was absolutely a big year for Ira. Ira and George had brought them together for the first time as a songwriting team to write a Broadway show. And because Lady Be Good was such a success, it fostered the rest of their career together. But by the time the late 1950s came around when Ella Fitzgerald recorded the songbook, Ira's career had come to an end.
He might not have known that at the time, but it did. We know that now. And the songbook, one of a series of songbooks that Ella Fitzgerald did of other songwriters of the period, brought a new light, a new focus on the songs that the brothers wrote. And so it was a commercial success. It was an artistic success.
And it brought on a wealth of new recordings of those songs and others in the catalog and helped Ira financially quite well.
George and Ira had very different interests and personalities. George was more extroverted. Ira was more shy or wanted to stay more in the background. And George was very musical. Ira was immersed in words. He read a lot. He kept a record of what he read. He started writing light verse songs. That was published in the college magazine or newspaper and other places.
Were they close as children being so different from each other?
They were only two years apart and they were the first and second children of Morris and Rose Gershwin. So they grew up together, even though. Their interests were very separate. George was somebody who went out and got into fights and came home with a black eye. Iroh was back in his room reading newspaper articles and magazines and books.
So his life became more one of observation rather than activity, whereas George's life would have been a 180-degree difference from that.
When Ira was young, either in high school or college, he became friends with Yip Harburg, the lyricist probably most famous for writing the lyrics for The Wizard of Oz. And he also wrote the very famous lyric, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? And not only were they friends and they often like talked about not only poetry and light verse, but also lyrics together.
Ira actually contributed a couple of lines to Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz. What was Ira's contribution?
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Chapter 3: What was Ira Gershwin's contribution to Over the Rainbow?
And so Ira was the one who came up with the line about bluebirds flying at the end, which is one of the more famous lines from the song.
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I?
Right. And I think that sums up the song in many ways. It sums up the film. It sums up Dorothy's journey. But I think he just was helping out his friends, and whether he got credit for that or not didn't really make that much difference to him.
And he did not get credit.
He did not get credit, no, no.
Why don't we just hear that coda, just hear the end of the song.
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow
That was the end of Somewhere Over the Rainbow from The Wizard of Oz, and we heard those last couple of lines, which were actually written by Ira Gershwin. Ira read so many books and wrote light verse, and some of the lyrics have really fun, funny literary references in them. An example for that is But Not For Me, which is a beautiful song.
And it has a line, I found more skies of gray than any Russian play can guarantee. One of his famous lines. Can you talk a little bit about that song and how it originated?
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Chapter 4: How did Ira Gershwin's lyrics reflect his personality?
It was the same with S'Wonderful. If somebody sang It's Wonderful, you'd get pretty upset. And I was listening to the Lee Wiley. She did a whole set of Gershwin songs. And she sings It's Wonderful. It's supposed to be S'Wonderful. But she's such a great singer. Anyhow, let's not get too distracted and let's hear But Not For Me. Should we hear Lee Wiley singing it?
Absolutely. Let's hear Lee Wiley.
And this is on her recording from the 1930s, right?
Yes, Lee Wiley, she's generally a forgotten name in the world of popular song these days, but she was one of the first performers to do what we now call songbook albums.
So let's hear Lee Wiley's recording from the 1930s of George and Ira Gershwin's But Not For Me.
They're writing songs of love But not for me The lucky stars above But not for me With love to leave the way I found more clouds of grace Than any Russian plane could guarantee I was a fool to fall And get that way I hold last And also lack a day Although I can dismiss A memory of your kiss I guess he's not for me
That was Lee Wiley, recorded in the 1930s, singing the Gershwin song, But Not For Me. My guest, Michael Owen, is the author of a new book called Ira Gershwin, A Life in Words. What was their approach to writing together? Everybody wants to know what came first, the words or the music. And their approach to writing together changed over the years.
It did. Ira jokingly would usually say that what came first was the contract.
Sammy Cahn used to say that, too. Yes. I think they all said that. I think they all said that.
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Chapter 5: What was the songwriting process between George and Ira Gershwin?
And very singable, yes. You don't have to fall over a tricky beat somewhere.
So why don't we hear Billie Holiday's recording of Embraceable You.
Embrace me My sweet embraceable you Embrace me My placeable you Just to Gypsy in me You and you alone Bring out the gypsy in me That was Billie Holiday singing the George and Ira Gershwin song, Embraceable You.
The Gershwins, along with DuBose Haywood, wrote what I think is considered the first great American opera, and certainly the first jazz-inflected American opera, Porgy and Bess. And it's always kind of confusing who wrote what lyric, because Ira Gershwin is known as the lyricist for Porgy and Bess, but some of the lyrics are actually written by DuBose Haywood.
and some of the lyrics are credited to both of them. Can you straighten that out a little bit?
I can try to straighten it out. It'll still probably remain slightly confusing. So George Gershwin and DuBose Hayward did not actually write together very often. Hayward was in the Carolinas and George was in New York. And there are certain songs that We know that Ira wrote himself.
Those were generally – people have generally said the songs that were written for Sport and Life, it ain't necessarily so and there's a book that's even for New York. Whereas some of the more –
operatic songs, particularly in the first act, were largely the work of DuBose Hayward, and some actually were joint numbers, whether it was because Hayward happened to be in New York at that time and the three of them could work together, or Ira had taken a phrase or two from the libretto or from the novel or the play and turned it into the lyric, and so therefore he felt that this was a song that could
be jointly credited to them. And the lyrics for the opera are credited to, in the original credits, to DuBose Hayward and Ira Gershwin jointly without any indication of who wrote what in that sense.
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Chapter 6: Why was Fred Astaire an important collaborator for the Gershwins?
Chapter 7: What are some of the clever lyrics Ira Gershwin wrote?
And if you looked at some of the archival material that I used in writing this book and went through Ira's papers as I did, you can see the vast amount of changes and ideas that flowed through his head as his brother was elaborating on these melodies.
But eventually, over the years, it became more of a joint partnership that it wasn't always the music that came first, particularly as they got into the so-called political musicals of the 30s of the I Sing and things like that, where the lyrics came more to the forefront of the show rather than the music. Memorable music, though it is, but it's the lyrics, the satirical nature of those lyrics.
that brought Ira to a new level where people were starting to compare him to one of his idols, Gilbert, W.S. Gilbert, with Gilbert and Sullivan fame.
So let's hear a song that the Gershwins wrote for a movie musical. And the musical is Shall We Dance? And the song is They Can't Take That Away From Me. Did they like writing for Fred Astaire? I love his singing as well as his dancing.
They did love writing for Fred. And there was something about Stare's voice. It wasn't necessarily the most powerful or the most evocative, but he had the rhythm. Exactly, yeah. He had the feel for what George and Ira had in mind. And so even in the years after George's death,
Ira wrote the songs for one of Fred's movie musicals, his reunion with Ginger Rogers in the 1940s, The Barclays at Broadway. Fred Astaire did the movie version of Funny Face in the 1950s with Audrey Hepburn. He did his own songbook, Gershwin Songbook Collection, or not a Gershwin Songbook Collection, but one that had a number of Gershwin songs on it.
So yeah, it was – they loved writing for him and Fred was just – and Adele, his sister who was actually more of a star in the early days than Fred was because they just had a certain rhythm. If you listen to the recordings that Fred and Adele did with George Gershwin in London in the 20s, you don't hear that sort of rhythm anymore from singers. It was something special.
Was it highly syncopated?
very syncopated, and I think that people talk about how the interpretation, and this is going on to a different subject a little bit, but the interpretation of George Gershwin's music has become more flowing and romantic, lyrical in a way, whereas if you listen to George Gershwin playing the piano on the old recordings, it's very staccato, very syncopated, and you can really get a sense of what the 20s might have been like from listening to those songs.
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Chapter 8: How did Ira Gershwin's work impact the Great American Songbook?
Kevin Whitehead is the author of Play the Way You Feel, The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film, Why Jazz, and New Dutch Swing, which has just been reissued. Tomorrow on Fresh Air for Thanksgiving Day, we feature one of our favorite interviews of the year with the beloved cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He brought his cello to the interview and played music that's inspired him from his childhood to today.
I hope you'll join us. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski. Our digital media producers are Molly Sivinesper and Sabrina Siewert. Thea Chaloner directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. All of us at Fresh Air wish you a happy Thanksgiving.
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