Remembering musical theater historian Robert Kimball
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This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Robert Kimball, the musical historian who rediscovered and rescued music and manuscripts by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and others, and who co-wrote important books about George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and U.B. Blake, died last week. He was 86 years old. Kimball, who was born in New York City in 1939, fell in love with Broadway musicals and musical composers when he was taken as a child to see Ethel Mervin star as Annie Oakley in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. Later in life, after publishing several books on popular songwriters, Kimball got a call from Irving Berlin himself, sparking a friendship that brought Kimball's life full circle. Robert Kimball graduated from Yale in 1961.
His undergraduate thesis was on Broadway musicals of the 1920s, but when he returned to Yale, it was for law school, from which he graduated in 1967. While a senior in law school, Kimball was asked to organize the collection donated to Yale by composer Cole Porter. Kimball did such a good job and enjoyed it so much that when he earned his law degree, he didn't become a lawyer. Instead, for the next four years, he curated Yale's musical theater collections and began writing books on the subject. And for Robert Kimball, following his passions paid off, and he discovered a treasure trove of musical history gold. The Warner Brothers movie studio in the late 1920s had invested in the new sound era by buying several music publishing houses.
The sale included 80 crates of material that lay unopened and untouched for more than 50 years. Then, in 1982, Robert Kimball found the crates in a Warner Brothers warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey, and catalogued them. Inside were hundreds of unpublished songs by Jerome Kern, unknown songs by Cole Porter, and missing songs by George and Ira Gershwin.
Who was Robert Kimball and why is he being remembered?
Eventually, Kimball became artistic advisor to the Ira Gershwin estate and edited a book collecting Ira Gershwin's complete lyrics, including many of the ones Kimball himself had rescued. Today, we'll remember Robert Kimball by listening back to some of his conversations with Terry Gross. The first came in 1994, when Kimball's collection of Ira Gershwin lyrics had just been published. Terry began by playing a Fred Astaire recording of a George and Ira Gershwin composition, Swonderful. Swonderful It's marvelous That you should care Oh, it's awful nice. It's paradise. It's what I love to see. You've made my life so glamorous. You can't blame me for feeling amorous Oh, so wonderful, so marvelous That you should care for me Robert Kimball, welcome to Fresh Air.
How well did you know Ira Gershwin and how did you get to know him? I knew Ira really quite well. I started working with him in 1972 when my friend and partner, Alfred Simon, who had been rehearsal pianist in Of The I Sing in 31, and I asked him if we could do a book about himself and his brother. And we went out to spend some time with him. We spent many days in the house. And the first day I met him, he took me aside and... asked me very, well, I would describe it as somewhat haltingly but insistently to make the book entirely about his brother George and not about himself. He saw himself to a certain degree as the custodian of George's legacy. Now, when I worked with him, he would come downstairs to his pool room, billiard room, office about noon, and he would say to us, boys, am I disturbing you?
And, of course, we were so happy to see him. And he would reminisce a lot because he knew we loved the old stories, and we would ask him questions. And on many wonderful occasions, he would ask Al Simon, who was a superb pianist and who knew, as I say, a lot of Gershwin work, if Al remembered particular songs. And one day he felt particularly lively.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:25
2
Who was Robert Kimball and why is he being remembered?
2:25–11:53
3
How did Robert Kimball discover and rescue lost Broadway manuscripts?
11:53–16:08
4
How did Kimball become Ira Gershwin’s artistic advisor and what did that role involve?
16:08–35:37
5
What can Ira Gershwin’s early parody lyric tell us about his later style?
35:37–51:20
Speakers
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