A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

What a masterpiece! Did you ever consider that George Gershwin thought up "It Ain't Necessarily So" with the Torah blessing as earworm? (They are identical, although Gershwin adds several different chromatic intervals into the motif.) Such are the delicious details of this "fine" book -- and David's writing will keep you spellbound as you join him through a nostalgic trip of our parents' generation of music. A great read, packed with David's wonderful personal anecdotes about family and the Jewish community in which he grew up -- combined with a compelling, rollicking narrative which certainly kept me -- a classically-trained musician -- stoked with stories and details which I had never known before! I wish he had gone into the actual music part of these genuises a bit more, but that would probably preclude many non-musician readers from enjoying it as much. After all, these guys used the same 12 notes that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven used. There's a book in there somewhere, methinx ... what are the musical reasons behind the power of these great songsters to achieve such satisfactory results in a profession where yesterday's hit is quickly forgotten? Does the lyric make the song great, even if the music isn't quite as brilliant as something else? Again -- a fantastic read! Enjoy! Lewis Saul

Remarkably, since the first half of the twentieth century, during the golden age of song writing, most of America's best songs - heard on the radio, on records, TV, movies and on the stage, and sung on the streets, at work and at home - were written by Jews. These include the Christian songs "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade," jazz "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," and the classics "God Bless America," "Embraceable You," "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered," and many more. People will be surprised to learn that the pure American songs of the west - such as the effervescent cowboy rhythms of "The Surrey" in Oklahoma - flowed from the imagination New York Jews; that in Lehman's list of the sixteen best Depression era popular songs only two or three were composed by non-Jews; that the words of many of these songs composed by Jews and their melodies reflect the strivings and hopes of new Jewish immigrants. This volume is part of the well-received and well-written Jewish Encounter series, which intend and succeeds in promoting Jewish literature, history, culture and ideas. All the books in the series are very good, but this volume has the most substance of those that I read, and it is filled with interesting examples. David Lehman is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry and The Best of American Poetry, among other books, and knows the subject he is writing about. Lehman helps us hear and understand the mysterious ingredients of jazziness and blueness, the wail, the wine and exultant notes that permeate the songs written by Jewish song writers. Many of the words in the purely American songs of are Jewish origin and many of the melodies recalls what is heard in the synagogue. The book's title reflects the mixture of joy and sadness in the songs, but also the romance of their writers with America. The non-Jew Cole Porter, looking for a way to write a successful song, said "I'll write Jewish tunes," and it worked. Lehman intersperses his history and descriptions with anecdotes from his own life that show his and his friends reactions to the songs. These accounts, as well as the history itself, are composed with humor and spice. Who was the first to write the "classic American popular song" that stimulated others? Scholars differ. Some say Irving Berlin in 1911; others that it was Jerome Kern in 1914. Both were Jewish. Lehman contends it was Kern. Be this as it may, the stories that Lehman tells about these giants and the history of the time is fascinating. Lehman is a superb writer. Readers will enjoy his language. His writing surges and soars in chapter 6, where he describes the impact of all this upon the Jewishness of the composers and the vile reactions of some anti-Semites. Unfortunately, this classic age ended around 1965, after only fifty years. It died when ten year olds had enough money to pick the music they wanted to hear.

This book is not an academic or scholarly analysis of the Jewish contribution to American popular song. Rather it is American poet David Lehman's personal `riff' on the subject. From Irving Berlin's 'Alexander's Rag- Time Band' in 1911 to Lenny Bernstein's `West Side Story' he tells the story of the Jewish contribution to American song in his own way, anecdotally and personally. Having grown up in a shul in which two of the greats Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg were members, he regales us with story after story about the whole panoply of Jewish - American composers, not simply Berlin and Bernstein but also Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rogers and Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Dorothy Fields,Vernon Duke,Ted Koehler, Frank Loesser,Arthur Schwartz,Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Sammy Cahn,Julie Styne, Howard Dietz, Steven Sondheim,even getting to those with a distinctively different sound, Carole King and Bob Dylan. He in the course of this tells us about their lives and characters, their relations with each other, the general family and social background. He argues that they by and large created an image and dream of America, a largely optimistic dream of America as a land of tremendous hope and energy, one in which love was always just around the corner and in which you could always in one way or another cross over to the sunny side of the street. But he sees them too reflecting other sides of the American reality, as for instance Harburg's producing the great Depression anthem 'Brother Can You Spare a Dime?' Lehman often skats along, combining lines from the songs and making that kind of composition a central part of his text. It is as if he wants to make a kind of song-like text in the spirit of that music which perhaps more than any other, people loved to sing and hum along with. Thanks to my beloved mother Edith (Itkie) Freedman of blessed memory who so loved this music I grew up with these songs as background to our everyday family life. So reading about so many of the songs I also know line by line was for me an especially great pleasure. However great my pleasure in reading the book there are things I would take exception to. It would have been better in my opinion for Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael not to have been made into kind of honorary Jews. I do believe he rightly sees in the irony and idiom, the minor key darker register of many of these songs a certain Jewish quality. But he too ackowledges that just as with American Jewish Literature which is far more American than Jewish, so too with the songs created by American Jews. They are 'God Bless America' and 'The House We Live In' and 'The Wizard of Oz' and even when secularized 'White Christmas' and Easter Parade' far more American than Jewish. I too would have preferred something perhaps impossible in a work of this scope more detailed `readings' of ` individual songs'. But on the whole this book is filled with treasures of lyric and story. Oft

I know: It was Cole Porter, the gay WASP millionaire from Indiana, who wrote "You're the Top," but few titles can convey better the appeal of David Lehman's splendid book about the Jewish composers and lyricists who virtually invented the Great American Songbook. In a work that is scholarly but never heavy, that wears its learning lightly and is beautifully written, Lehman tells us exactly what these composers (Arlen, Berlin, Gershwin, Rodgers and others) and poets did, and how they did it. It's a delicious bed-side companion, a Baedeker for a distant country.

In this very well-written, humorous, and affectionate homage to the American Songbook, David Lehman hears the Jewish sounds in much of America's greatest popular music. All the great characters are here--Kern, the Gershwins, Berlin, Arlen, and so many others. I found the story of Larry Hart to be especially moving. Lehman seeks their appeal by examining the story of his own interest in the music, bringing us along by using enthusiasm and knowledge. I knew the book was so good because at the end I wanted to go hear the music. Indeed, the book's charms work so well you can hear the strains of some of the great songs in the rhythm of Lehman's extraordinary prose.