Ira Gershwin at 125 The famed lyricist made the American vernacular sing. By John Edward Hasse
Lennon & McCartney. Rodgers & Hammerstein. Gilbert & Sullivan. Creative collaboration in songwriting comes in many shapes. None was more singular than that of composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira, his older brother. Their mutual trust, respect and love made them deeply compatible creators. Ira’s words and George’s music melded into hundreds of sparkling songs, such as “The Man I Love” and “Embraceable You.”
Ira penned clever, virtuosic lyrics for their pieces. Falling in love was one of his favorite subjects, as in this stanza combining wit, whimsy and sentiment:
In time the Rockies may crumble,
Gibraltar may tumble
(They’re only made of clay),
But—our love is here to stay.
Although one of America’s pre-eminent lyricists, Ira has been overshadowed by George’s brilliance, fame and effervescent persona. George lapped up the limelight; Ira shunned it.
Ira was born in Brooklyn 125 years ago, on Dec. 6, 1896, to Russian-Jewish immigrants as Israel Gershvin. By the time he was 20 years old, the family had moved 28 times due to his father’s changing workplaces. Despite the disruptions, Ira became a voracious reader, a poetry lover, and a theater habitué. From 1924 on, beginning with the musical “Lady, Be Good!,” he supplied words to nearly all his brother’s songs, initially for Broadway and later for Hollywood.
Which comes first—the words or the music? “The phone call,” quipped lyricist Sammy Cahn. For the Gershwin brothers, the music came first: George poured ideas into his notebooks and onto the piano keyboard. Then Ira had to fit words to his brother’s energetic and sometimes choppy melodies.
In a 1930 New York Times article, Ira wrote that his art required “the infinite patience of a gemsetter.” Sometimes he stayed up all night just to find a single word: He became known as “the jeweler.” Ira asserted that he took his titles “from thin air, literally and figuratively. . . .” He continued, “listening to the argot in everyday conversation results in pay dirt for lyric writers.” He told biographer Isaac Goldberg, “Good lyrics should be simple, colloquial, rhymed conversation.” Ira Gershwin made the American vernacular sing.
Although his rhymes are wonderfully catchy, there’s much more to the art of his lyrics. For example, he relished capturing everyday speech and elongating syllables, as in “Bidin’ My Time”:
I’m bidin’ my ti-me,
’Cause that’s the kinda guy I’-m.
His “’S Wonderful” spotlights Americans’ clipping of words:
’S wonderful! ’S marvelous—
You should care for me!
He loved the playful and unexpected:
My cousin in Milwaukee
Who had a voice that’s rather squawky.
He put his wit on full display:
You say eether and I say eyether.
You say neether and I say nyther;
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther—
Let’s call the whole thing off!
In addition to songs about love, Ira penned a few about music itself, including “Fascinating Rhythm” and the slangy “I Got Rhythm”:
I got rhythm,
I got music.
Who could ask for anything more?
Like other Broadway lyricists, Ira Gershwin had to say something fresh, often in only a hundred words, and fit them to a specific character, situation and place. And yet dozens of his lyrics, plucked out of their productions, have endured—a testament to the brilliance of his and George’s work. The pair’s material became integral to the Great American Songbook—the canon of classic popular songs written between 1900 and 1950 (some would say 1920 and 1960).
After the brothers Gershwin established themselves on Broadway, Ira penned lyrics for “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and several other arias in the 1935 opera “Porgy and Bess”—with music by George, libretto and most lyrics by DuBose Heyward.
In the 1930s, as talking and singing movies became increasingly lucrative, film studios lured one songwriter after another to Hollywood, including Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter and, in 1936, the Gershwin brothers. There George and Ira wrote for three motion pictures, penning such evergreens as “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,”“Nice Work If You Can Get It” and “Love Is Here To Stay.”
Though their personalities were dissimilar—George was brash, Ira bookish—the brothers loved each other fiercely. They lived next door to one another in New York and then in Beverly Hills. In 1937, when George died of an undiagnosed brain tumor, Ira was devastated. Later, he occasionally collaborated with other composers such as Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen. But after the mid-1950s, his songwriting was behind him. He died in 1983.
The Gershwins’ songs have been embraced by singers as disparate as Sarah Vaughn, Kiri Te Kanawa, Bob Dylan and Lady Gaga. The four-CD “ Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Songbook” showcases her flawless diction and emotional transparency, enabling Ira’s lines to shine with crystalline clarity. He famously said, “I never knew how good our songs were until I heard Ella Fitzgerald sing them.” The enduring esteem accorded this album testifies to Ira’s own line, paraphrased here, that his lyrics are here to stay.
—Mr. Hasse is curator emeritus of American music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. His books include “Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington ” (Da Capo) and “Discover Jazz” (Pearson).
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