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Harold Arlen
Carl Van Vechten photo of Harold Arlen, 1960
Basic Information
Born: Chaim Arluck, February 15, 1905, Buffalo, New York (US)
Died: April 23, 1986 (age 81), New York City
Primary songwriting role: composer; also pianist and singer
Overview and Commentary
Harold Arlen (This section is currently in preparation)
Overview
in progress
Comments by
Jonathan Schwartz
On his Saturday, August 6, 2011 radio show, Schwartz commented that he knew of only two Harold Arlen songs written in a minor key, which was surprising given the bluesy quality that inhabits so much of the composer's work. He cited "For Every Man There's a Woman" and "Paris Is a Lonely Town" (the latter currently not included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog).
Schwartz has often noted that whereas one of Richard Rodgers' favorite forms of compostion is the waltz, Arlen seldom wrote waltzes, a rare exception being "When the Boys Come Home" from Bloomer Girl (1944).
"Over the Rainbow"
Judy Garland (vocal) and Harold Arlen (piano),
San Francisco, 1940 -- audio over photo montage
Martha Raye and Harold sing and play a medley of Arlen songs on theMartha Raye Show, 1956
Oscar Peterson Plays the Harold Arlen Songbook
1954/1959, Peterson (piano), Ray Brown Bass,
Herb Ellis (guitar) or (on '59 recordings)
Ed Thigpen (drums)
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook
(1960)--The Arlen album in the great Norman Granz series of Ella singing the American Songbook composers--cover portait of Ella
by Henri Matisse
Max Wilk. They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters. New York and Stratford, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008. (originally published 1973 as They're Playing Our Song: From Jerome Kern to Stephen Sondheim—The Stories behind the Words and Music of Two Generations (chapter devoted to interview with Arlen).
Edward Jablonski. Harold Arlen: Rhythm, Rainbows and Blues, Boston: Northeastern UP, 1996. (This is an expanded version of the the earlier Jablonski biography of Arlen, Happy with the Blues.)
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Cafe Songbook
Master List of Great American Songbook Songwriters
Names of songwriters who have written at least one song included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook are listed below.
Names of songwriters with two or more song credits in the catalog (with rare exceptions) are linked to their own Cafe Songbook pages, e.g. Fields, Dorothy.
Names of songwriters with only one song credit in the catalog are linked to the Cafe Songbook page for that song, on which may be found information about the songwriter or a link to an information source for him or her.
Please note: Cafe Songbook pages for songwriters are currently in various stages of development.
. New York: Doubleday, 1961 (Da Capo Press paperback, August, 1986).
. Deep C Productions. 1999. (A DVD/VHS Bio-documentary of Harold Arlen's life]