Berlin, Gershwin and Porter — Great American Songwriters

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Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter

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…..At the heart of great jazz music are the tunes that make up the Great American Songbook.  These songs – most often written for Broadway musicals and films of early Hollywood – have become known as “American Standards,” and are some of the most revered in popular music history.

…..While many distinguished composers contributed to the Songbook, we are directing attention on three eminent figures – Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Cole Porter – whose lives have come into focus due to the recent publication of three outstanding works devoted to them: Irving Berlin: New York Genius, by James Kaplan; Summertime: George Gershwin’s Life in Music, by Richard Crawford; and The Letters of Cole Porter, by Cliff Eisen and Dominic McHugh.

…..In this issue of Jerry Jazz Musician, we feature interviews with these acclaimed writers and scholars who discuss their books and their subjects’ lives in-and-out of music.

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…..In our interview on Irving Berlin, Kaplan – author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman. – discusses Berlin’s unparalleled musical career and business success, his intense sense of family and patriotism during a complex and evolving time, and the artist’s permanent cultural significance.

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…..In our interview on George Gershwin, Richard Crawford, the professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past president of the American Musicological Society who has published ten books on American music (including the revered America’s Musical Life: A History), discusses Gershwin, the man he has described as a “fresh voice of the Jazz Age” who “challenged Americans to rethink their assumptions about composition and performance, nationalism, cultural hierarchy, and the racial divide.”

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…..In our interview on Cole Porter, Dominic McHugh, the Professor in Musicology at the University of Sheffield, U.K. who has published six books on American musicals (including Loverly: The Life and Times of My Fair Lady and The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner) talks about how “several of the big biographical tropes that we associate with Porter are either modified or contested by the letters,” and that “when you put together these letters, and add our quite extensive commentary between the letters, it creates a different picture of him.”

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…..These interviews all include photos and several full-length songs, and provide readers easy access to an entertaining and enlightening learning experience about these three giants of American popular music, and the era in which they created.  Please enjoy…

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