TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. The classic songs "Lady Be Good," "Embraceable You," "'S Wonderful," "Love Is Here To Stay," "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off," "Fascinating Rhythm," "I Got Rhythm," "I've Got A Crush On You," "My Ship," "The Man That Got Away," "Long Ago (And Far Away)" - I could go on - they all have lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Most of his best-known songs were written with his younger brother, the pianist and composer George Gershwin. But Ira also wrote with Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Kurt Weill.
My guest, Michael Owen, is the author of the new book "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words." Owen was the archivist for the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts until those papers were given to the Library of Congress. Owen now works with the trusts as a consulting archivist and historian. He's also the author of a book about the singer Julie London. Let's start with Ella Fitzgerald singing "Lady Be Good" from her 1959 album, "Ella Fitzgerald Sings The George And Ira Gershwin Song Book." It's the title song from an early Gershwin musical.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OH, LADY BE GOOD")
ELLA FITZGERALD: (Singing) Oh, sweet and lovely lady, be good. Oh, lady, be good to me. I am so awfully misunderstood. So lady, be good to me. Oh, please have some pity. I'm all alone in this big city. I tell you, I'm...
GROSS: 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" 'cause 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 Song Book" really helped give him that. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of both of those and, you know, the "Lady, Be Good" musical and the Ella Fitzgerald "Gershwin Song Book"?
MICHAEL OWEN: Thank you, first off, for having me on. 1924 was absolutely a big year for Ira and George. It 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 "Song Book," 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 "Song Book," 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.
GROSS: George and Ira had very different interests and personalities. George was more extroverted. Ira was more, like, shy or wanted to stay more in the background. And, you know, 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 that was published in the college magazine or newspaper and other places. Were they close as children being so different from each other?
OWEN: 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. Ira was back in his room, reading newspaper articles and magazines and books. So, you know, his life became more one of observation rather than activity, whereas George's life would have been a 180-degree difference from that.
GROSS: 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?
OWEN: Well, all three of the writers who were friends - Harold Arlen, the composer, Yip Harburg and Ira, who had been classmates and writing partners together before - when Arlen and Harburg had been hired to write the score at MGM for "Wizard Of Oz," they played the tune that - Arlen's tune that became "Over The Rainbow" for Ira because he was a sounding board. And I must say that that was the way it was in - with all these writers of that period. They were all generally friendly to each other. I don't think there was a lot of competition. I mean, there was competition, obviously, but there wasn't angry competition.
So when the song was finished, or at least when Harburg and Arlen thought the song was finished, they came over to Ira's house and Arlen would sit down at the piano and play the tune, and Harburg sang the song. And Ira liked it a lot, but he felt like - that there was something missing at the end, a coda to the song. 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. But...
GROSS: If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can't I?
OWEN: Right. And I think that sums up the song in many ways. It sums up the film. It sums up Dorothy's journey. But Ira - 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.
GROSS: And he did not get credit as a lyricist?
OWEN: I mean, he didn't. He did not get credit.
GROSS: Yeah.
OWEN: No. No (laughter).
GROSS: Why don't we just hear that coda, just hear the end of the song?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OVER THE RAINBOW")
JUDY GARLAND: (Singing) If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can't I?
GROSS: 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, you know, 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 where - how it originated?
OWEN: Well, "But Not For Me" was one of the songs that was written for the 1930 musical "Girl Crazy," which featured a very young Ginger Rogers. That was a song that Ginger Rogers sang in the show, a ballad that she sang. And it was also the show that brought Ethel Merman to everybody's attention, so "I Got Rhythm" is in the same show. And it was perhaps the height of the Gershwins' silly shows by 1930 before they went into some of the political shows of the few years after and then "Porgy And Bess." "But Not For Me" is - it's a very romantic ballad, and you can take it that way. But if you listen to the lyrics closely, you can hear both Ira's influences - because, as you say, he read a lot, and he had a huge library - but also his tricky rhymes about wedding knots and being that that was not for me.
GROSS: Part of the lyric - and it's the end of the lyric - goes, when every happy plot ends with a marriage knot and there's no knot for me. So it's a...
OWEN: Right. Right.
GROSS: ...Clever play on words.
OWEN: Absolutely correct. And I think that one of the things that Ira complained about sometimes was that in a theater, most people were never going to get that sense of the song. They were going to hear the two words and the two sounds, knot and not, and they'd think they were the same thing. And it was only the people who actually studied the sheet music or who sang the song professionally who might pick it up. But he did this on purpose.
GROSS: Why?
OWEN: Because he always wanted to have some fun with the lyrics. I don't think he ever thought of lyric writing, particularly in his early years, as a job so much as it was his way of making his thoughts about love and art known to the world of musical theater and film music and popular songs. And whether people got that or not, that certainly wasn't up to him. But he was very protective of his lyrics. And when singers would sing songs not in the way that he wrote them - singing, I've got rhythm, instead of, I got rhythm - you know, he was somewhat offended by that in a humorous way.
GROSS: He was the same with "'S Wonderful."
OWEN: Oh, absolutely.
GROSS: If somebody sang, it's wonderful, he'd get pretty upset. And I was listening...
OWEN: Yeah.
GROSS: ...To the Lee Wiley - she did a whole set of Gershwin songs. And she sings, it's wonderful, as opposed to, 's wonderful. But she's such a great singer. Anyhow, let's not get too distracted and hear...
OWEN: (Laughter).
GROSS: Let's hear "But Not For Me." Shall we hear Lee Wiley singing it?
OWEN: Absolutely. Let's hear Lee Wiley.
GROSS: And this is on her recording from the 1930s, right?
OWEN: Yes. Lee Wiley was - 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.
GROSS: So let's hear Lee Wiley's recording from the 1930s of George and Ira Gershwin's "But Not For Me."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BUT NOT FOR ME")
LEE WILEY: (Singing) They're writing songs of love, but not for me. A lucky star's above, but not for me. With love to Iead the way, I found more clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee. I was a fool to fall and get that way. Hi-ho, alas, and also lackaday. Although I can't dismiss the memory of your kiss, I guess he's not for me.
GROSS: That was Lee Wiley, recorded in the 1930s singing the Gershwins' song "But Not For Me." My guest, Michael Owen, is the author of a new book called "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words." Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF GERALD CLAYTON'S "ENVISIONINGS")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Owen, author of the new book "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.
OWEN: It did. Ira jokingly would usually say that what came first was the contract. But...
GROSS: Sammy Cahn used to say that, too (laughter).
OWEN: Yes, I think - so...
GROSS: I think they all said that.
OWEN: I think they all said that, yeah.
GROSS: Yeah.
OWEN: Yes. And in the early days - and, you know, I would say that it would have been from the '20s into the mid-1930s - it was usually George's melodic ideas that started the ball rolling for a song. And it might just have been a fragment of a melody. And Ira had a very good memory for melodies, even though he couldn't really play the piano. But he did remember them in a certain way that kept them in his mind and could bring them back and try to remind his brother of something that might have been brought up a few months earlier.
And it was a very unique relationship. I mean, I know that every songwriter worked in a different way. Songwriting partnerships worked in different ways. But typically, over the years, Ira would be at a little card table next to George at the piano. And he would have his big sheets of paper with him. And he would just scribble out ideas. 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 - you know, 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 - what the so-called political musicals of the '30s - "Of Thee 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 is 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 of Gilbert and Sullivan fame.
GROSS: 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.
OWEN: They did love writing for Fred. And there was something about Astaire's voice. It wasn't necessarily the most powerful or the most evocative, but he had the rhythm.
GROSS: Exactly, yeah.
OWEN: And 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 Barkleys Of Broadway." And Fred Astaire did the movie version of "Funny Face" in the 1950s with Audrey Hepburn. And 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, and, you know, it was something special.
GROSS: Was it highly syncopated?
OWEN: Very syncopated. And I think that people talk about, you know, 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 more so than if you listen to a more contemporary recording, even the ones that are excellent in their own way.
GROSS: So this is a song from the 1937 movie musical "Shall We Dance?". And the song is "They Can't Take That Away From Me." Any insights into how the song was written?
OWEN: It was actually written very quickly. The - when the - when George and Ira came to Hollywood the second time in 1936 to write for RKO Pictures, to write for Astaire and Rogers, who were already a successful team, they came to Hollywood with a fair number of ideas already in mind. So the songs for that first of the three movies that they wound up doing in LA and in the '36, '37 period - they all came together very quickly. The songs are written to fit certain sequences in the film. This was one of them and one of the best. This - the songs that came from this movie and the other two movies are, in most people's opinion, and mine, too, the top flight (ph) songs that George and Ira wrote.
GROSS: OK, so this is Fred Astaire singing "They Can't Take That Away From Me."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME")
FRED ASTAIRE: (Singing) The way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea. The memory of all that, no, no, they can't take that away from me. The way your smile just beams, the way you sing off-key, the way you haunt my dreams, no, no, they can't take that away from me. We may never, never meet again on the bumpy road to love. Still, I'll always, always keep the memory of the way you hold your knife, the way we dance till 3, the way you've changed my life, no, no, they can't take that away from me.
GROSS: There's Fred Astaire singing "They Can't Take That Away From Me." My guest is Michael Owen, author of the new book, "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words." Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME")
ASTAIRE: (Singing) We may never, never meet again on the bumpy road to love.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Owen, author of the new book "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words." He knows a lot about Gershwin's life and music. For about a decade, he ran the Ira Gershwin estate archive. And then after that, he became a consulting historian and archivist to the estate.
Is it fair to say that one of Ira Gershwin's favorite songs was "Embraceable You" - of his own songs?
OWEN: I think he was hard put to say what his favorite song was. He always said that it was like choosing your favorite child. I think it was one of his father's favorite songs because his father seemed to think that the line come to papa do was about him.
GROSS: No. Really?
OWEN: (Laughter) Yes.
GROSS: That's a love song (laughter).
OWEN: The way that Ira described it in his book, "Lyrics On Several Occasions," is that whenever that line would come up in the song, Morris Gershwin - that's his father - would sort of beat his chest and, you know, say, you know, that's about me (laughter).
GROSS: That's hilarious, I mean...
OWEN: So everyone has their, you know...
GROSS: Isn't it like, don't be a naughty baby; come to papa do...
OWEN: Come to papa do. That - it's...
GROSS: ...My sweet, embraceable you? Who talks about their father that way?
(LAUGHTER)
OWEN: Well, I - you know, everyone has their own interpretation of lyrics.
GROSS: Yeah. You know, in a lot of - it's a beautiful song. In a lot of ways...
OWEN: It is.
GROSS: ...The lyric is pretty simple. And you write that George was always saying to Ira, simplify, simplify. Why would he say that?
OWEN: Well, I think it goes back to George maybe having a slightly better understanding of the popular audience, that they weren't necessarily interested in tricky rhyme schemes and...
GROSS: And name-checks of Schopenhauer (laughter).
OWEN: Yeah, and name-checks of Russian composers...
GROSS: Yeah.
OWEN: ...And politicians and that. And largely because, as I think I said earlier, you know, a theater audience isn't - certainly in the earlier days when amplification wasn't de rigueur, it was hard for people sometimes to hear the actual lyrics being sung, particularly if the band was loud - the pit band. And in some cases, it was quite loud. And so this idea that keeping a song simple was better was not always, you know, a happy thing for Ira to do.
In at least a couple of instances, you know, he would be almost forced in a way to submit lyrics that he wasn't quite happy with, but he knew that the time was up and he had to do it. That was particularly the case with something like "Love Walked In," which he was - which was a big hit from "The Goldwyn Follies" in 1938, and the song "Long Ago and Far Away" that he wrote with Jerome Kern in the 1940s for the movie "Cover Girl." He was never overly happy with those lyrics, perhaps thinking that they were slightly too simple. But they were - conversely - two of his most financially successful songs. So perhaps, you know...
GROSS: And very, very singable.
OWEN: And very singable, yes. You don't have to fall over a tricky beat somewhere.
GROSS: So why don't we hear Billie Holiday's recording of "Embraceable You"?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "EMBRACEABLE YOU")
BILLIE HOLIDAY: (Singing) Embrace me, my sweet, embraceable you. Embrace me, my irreplaceable you. Just to look at you, my heart grows tipsy in me. You and you alone bring out the gypsy in me.
GROSS: That was Billie Holiday singing the George and Ira Gershwin song "Embraceable You." The Gershwins, along with DuBose Heyward, wrote, like, what I think is considered the first great American opera and certainly the first, you know, like, 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 Heyward, and some of the lyrics are credited to both of them. Can you straighten that out a little bit?
OWEN: I can try to straighten it out. It's - it'll still probably remain slightly confusing. So George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward did not actually write together very often. Heyward 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 Sportin' Life - "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "There's A Boat Dat's Leavin' For New York." Whereas some of the more operatic songs, particularly in the first act, were largely the work of DuBose Heyward.
And some actually were joint numbers, whether it was because Heyward 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 Heyward and Ira Gershwin jointly, without any indication of who wrote what in that sense.
GROSS: Since it sounds like we're certain that Ira wrote "There's A Boat That's Leavin' Soon For New York," I thought we'd hear that and also hear it from the 1977 Houston Grand Opera recording of "Porgy And Bess" because I think this song really exemplifies how the Gershwins combined opera and jazz. And the arrangements are so good, too, which I assume George Gershwin did.
OWEN: Correct. George arranged the - and orchestrated the entire opera.
GROSS: Yeah. So let's hear this 1977 production. The singer is Larry Marshall. Before we hear it, just set up briefly the context of this song.
OWEN: This is a song from late in the opera, where Sportin' Life...
GROSS: Who's a pimp.
OWEN: ...The pimp, yes, the drug-dealing pimp in Catfish Row, tries to bring Bess back to his side by persuading her that he can bring her to New York. She can have a happy life as a prostitute and...
GROSS: And wear the finest fashions?
OWEN: ...And wear the finest fashions and take some happy dust and, you know, move away from these country folk who - you know, you're more like me, Bess. You're not one of these people. So that's basically the idea behind the song.
GROSS: OK. Let's hear it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THERE'S A BOAT DAT'S LEAVIN' SOON FOR NEW YORK")
LARRY MARSHALL: (Singing) There's a boat that's leaving soon for New York. Come with me. That's where we belong, sister. You and me can live that high life in New York. Come with me. There you can't go wrong, sister. I'll buy you the swellest mansion upon upper Fifth Avenue. And through Harlem, we'll go strutting. We'll go a-strutting, and there'll be nothing too good for you. I'll dress you in silks and satins, in the latest Paris styles. And all your blues, you'll be forgetting. You'll be forgetting. There'll be no fretting, just nothing but smiles.
GROSS: That's a song from "Porgy And Bess." And this was from a 1977 Houston Grand Opera production featuring Larry Marshall singing. And my guest is Michael Owen, author of the new book "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF JULIAN LAGE'S "SUPERA")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Michael Owen, author of the new book "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words." Ira Gershwin's career stalled at some point. Why did it stall? Was it changing times? Was it George's death? What was the problem?
OWEN: More the former, I think, than the latter. By 1954, when Ira wrote what turned out to be his last two significant works, the songs for "A Star Is Born" and for the drama "The Country Girl" with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, which was also written with Harold Arlen. He wrote a few songs for that. Times had changed. Musical theater had changed. Ira had had a couple of unsuccessful shows in the '40s with Kurt Weill and the composer Arthur Schwartz. So he was somewhat put off from writing for Broadway, just because it seemed to him that it was too much effort, too much cost and not enough that was coming back to him.
And music was changing. Obviously, we had rock and roll arriving in the 1950s, and what was popular was changing. And although the Gershwin songs, as you've mentioned, you know, were becoming part of the world of what we call standards now, and people like Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Peggy Lee and Billie Holiday and - were increasingly doing the songs on recordings and making, for Ira, quite a pleasant amount of money, he just wasn't interested in what was going on in the world of movie musicals and theater at that point enough to want to work in them anymore.
GROSS: How did Ira Gershwin's life end?
OWEN: Well, Ira died in 1983. He had been housebound for a number of years. His last real work was in the early 1960s. And so he - you know, after the end of the 1960s, which was basically the last time he traveled, he increasingly stayed at his house. He had had a stroke and various other physical ailments over the years, which were leaving him more incapacitated. And so he was hospitalized on a number of occasions for different things related to his heart.
And - but I - you know, I will say that his final years actually were quite good ones because among other things was the arrival of a young man by the name of Michael Feinstein, who I know you've had on your show, who was hired initially to sort of entertain Ira and wound up working on Ira's archive. And I did some similar work to what Ira did or to what Michael did in terms of the archive but certainly not entertaining Ira. I wasn't around then.
But - and, you know, there was a piano that was brought up into Ira's bedroom. And Michael spent a lot of time at the house, singing for Ira some of the more obscure corners of Ira's catalog, which you know, entertained, you know, a man who had become somewhat isolated. But it - you know, it was a good life. It was a successful life. And, you know, it is certainly one that is well-remembered by those of us who love great songs, great lyrics and the great American songbook.
GROSS: So why don't we end with "Love Is Here To Stay," the George and Ira Gershwin collaboration, one of their really enduring songs, sung by Rosemary Clooney, who was Ira's next-door neighbor and a great interpreter of Gershwin's songs? Is this a song you particularly like?
OWEN: I do. It - I shouldn't really give it away, but it is kind of how that book ends, you know.
GROSS: Yeah. Yeah, a fitting ending. And it's the way Rosemary Clooney used to end a lot of her shows.
OWEN: Yes, I saw Rosemary in one of her final performances in San Francisco. Not that I truly remember what she ended that concert with, but yes, she was always a great interpreter. And she did a complete recording of Ira lyrics on one of her Concord records in her later years.
GROSS: Michael Owen, thank you so much for talking with us.
OWEN: Thank you, Terry. It's been a pleasure.
GROSS: Michael Owen is the author of the new book "Ira Gershwin: A Life In Words."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT IS THERE TO SAY")
ROSEMARY CLOONEY: (Singing) It's very clear our love is here to stay. Not for a year, but ever and a day. The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know may just be passing fancies and in time may go, but, oh, my dear, our love is here stay. Together we're going a long, long way. In time, the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble. They're only made of clay, but our love is here to stay.
GROSS: Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead has an appreciation of Roy Haynes, who played with musicians ranging from Lester Young and Charlie Parker to Pat Metheny, and Chick Corea. Haynes died earlier this month. This is FRESH AIR.
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