Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Philip Furia
Today marks the 116th anniversary of the birth of Ira Gershwin, lyricist and brother to composer George Gershwin. There are many fascinating details about Ira, ten of which are collected here.
1. When Ira was growing up, he held a lot of odd jobs, one of which was shipping clerk at the B. Altman department store housed in the same building where today Oxford University Press has its offices.
By Philip Furia
Next to George and Ira Gershwin, the only major fraternal songwriting team in the history of American popular music has been Robert and Richard Sherman. Together, the Sherman brothers wrote songs for such film musicals as Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Tom Sawyer, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats. Richard Sherman composed the music for their songs, and both he and Robert wrote the lyrics.
I would never pretend to be an expert on Lena Horne, but my research prompts me to make a few observations on her career as a singer of popular songs. Perhaps the most striking thing about her stellar career is that Lena Horne, alone among the great singers of her era, never introduced a hit song. The songs she is associated with are the “standards” of what’s been termed The Great American Song Book. In the television obituaries, for example, she was heard singing the classic songs of Cole Porter, Ira and George Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Even her signature song, “Stormy Weather,” was originally written by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen for Ethel Waters in the 1933 Cotton Club Revue. (Waters, supposedly, always resented the fact that Lena Horne had co-opted “her” song).
A second excerpt from The Elephant in the Room
by Philip Jenkins For observers of Washington politics who remember the 1970s, the sense of déjà vu becomes stronger daily. Liberals freely compare the Iraq conflict with the latter stages of the Vietnam War, while scandals involving corruption and illegal leaks threaten the highest ranks of the Republican Party. Domestic controversies focus on intelligence abuses […]