"Ira Gershwin A Life in Words" by Michael Owen: A JazzProfiles Feature

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"This book is a marvel and a model of how to write resonantly and engagingly about a charming subject who was unintentionally elusive. Having personally known and adored Ira for years, I am overwhelmed by the information and detail Owen captures. I love the way he spins the tale of a greatly talented lyricist who, thanks to this book, might permanently find his proper place in the pantheon of great songwriters."

—MICHAEL FEINSTEIN, singer, pianist, founder of the Great American Songbook Foundation, and author of The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs

This is a story about a world gone by.

About a time when rhapsodic musical melodies were graced with poetic lyrics.

A time when songs were artistically composed and the words that made them memorable were created by writers with a sensitivity to language who used it to help create an enjoyable musical experience.

Not all of these songs were serious: some were whimsical; some expressed light-hearted sentiment; some were downright comedic.

But the music and the lyrics were crafted in such a way that they created feelings that reached a variety of emotions: love, happiness, longing, grief and many more.

How did these lyricized songs happen? Who did it and why?

Ira Gershwin A Life in Words by Michael Owen tells the story of one of these magical wordsmiths, a story too often overshadowed by a more renowned brother - George Gershwin.

In many ways the story that Michael tells here is one of death and resurrection.

Following George Gershwin’s death at the age of 38, Ira Gershwin is forced to begin anew. The composer is no more but the lyricist is challenged by circumstances to carry on.

The six chapters of Michael’s biography are essentially structured around the death of George in 1937: the first three with George and the last three in which Ira draws out from under the shadow of his more famous brother and becomes his own man.

By way of background, Michael Owen is a historian, researcher and served for many years as the manager of Ira’s archive. He is also the author of one of my favorite books about Jazz and popular singing - Go Slow: The Life of Julie London [2017]. He also served as the editor for The Gershwin’s Abroad [2024].

Obviously, with that background, who better to write Ira’s biography?

The significance of Michael’s work and its contribution to the genre of what is now generally referred to as the literature of The Great American Songbook is ably summed up in this assessment by —ANNA HARWELL CELENZA, author of Jazz Italian Style and general editor of The Cambridge Companion to George Gershwin:

"In Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words” Michael Owen offers an insightful exploration of his subject's lifelong quest for an artistic voice. Using a rich variety of archival resources — personal letters, diaries, production notes, and business correspondence — Owen documents Gershwin's tireless commitment to song-writing, from the linguistic play of his teenage years and his prizewinning successes (and failures) as an adult, to his commitment to preserving the Great American Songbook and the Gershwin family legacy in his final years. The book is indispensable for fans and scholars alike. It shines a revelatory light on the complex life of the great lyricist who lived forever in the shadow of his younger brother George."

The “artistic voice” that Ms. Celenza references comes to life with examples, description and analyses on what made Ira so special - his lyrics.

These are portrayed throughout the book in the context in which they were created. Thus we read:

“Shall We Dance [1937 Astaire/Rogers film] proved that George and Ira could still write hit songs, and the score contained at least three that rank among the greatest of their storied careers.

The idea for the lyric of "They All Laughed" came from the 19205 boom in the business of self-improvement, with an extremely popular correspondence school advertisement for the US School of Music: "They laughed when I sat down to play the piano but when I started to play!" One of the lines—"They laughed at Fulton and his steamboat"—may have been borrowed from Ira's friend Groucho Marx, who reportedly made that quip to George S. Kaufman.

They all laughed at Christopher Columbus

When he said the world was round;

They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.

They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother When they said that man could fly; They told Marconi Wireless was a phony—-It's the same old cry!

They laughed at me wanting you,

Said I was reaching for the moon; But oh, you came through—

Now they'll have to change their tune.

They all said we never could be happy, They laughed at us—and how!

But ho, ho, ho— Who's got the last laugh now?

One of the cleverer ideas in "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" was inspired by Lee Gershwin's youthful — and retained in adulthood — pronunciation:

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!

You like potato and I like po-tah-to, You like tomato and I like to-mah-to; Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to— Let's call the whole thing off!

For Ira, the key ingredient in "They Can't Take That Away from Me" was the lovely, raised note that his brother gave him to accompany the buildup to the emotion of the word "life" at the end of the song:

The way you wear your hat, The way you sip your tea, The mem'ry of all that— No, no! They can't take that away from me!

The way your smile just beams,

The way you sing off key, The way you haunt my dreams— No, no! They can't take that away from me!

We may never, never meet again

On the bumpy road to love, Still I'll always, always keep

The mem'ry of—

The way you hold your knife, The way we danced till three,

The way you've changed my life-No, no! They can't take that away from me! No! They can't take that away from me!”

Rarely are masterfully wrought lyrics such these read. They are usually heard while listening to the song in which they are placed. In offering them to us in this manner, Michael helps us appreciate them even more.

Or as the esteemed essayist, writer and novelist Joseph Epstein explains in his Wall Street Journal review: 

“Lyricology,” as Michael Owen notes in his biography, is not an established subject, which is to say that not all that much is known about the lyricist and his work. Many popular composers — Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim — were able to do without lyricists, writing both music and lyrics themselves. Others — Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin — found lyricists indispensable. The construction of lyrics is fraught with complications. Some composers could not write their music until they had the lyrics before them; others—George Gershwin again—wrote the music and let lyricists find words to fit the music. 

The lyrics of the songs of what came to be known as musical comedy — featuring romance, colloquial speech, street slang—may indeed be the true American poetry. They were written by, among others, Yip Harburg, P.G. Wodehouse, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Ira Gershwin. As for the job of lyricist, it is perhaps best described by Ira Gershwin himself: “Given a fondness for music, a feeling for rhyme, a sense of whimsy and humor, an eye for the balanced sentence, an ear for the current phrase and the ability to imagine oneself as a performer trying to put over the number in progress — given all this, I would still say it takes four or five years collaborating with knowledgeable composers to become a well-rounded lyricist.” 

On the precariousness of the lyricist’s job, Ira wrote that it requires “a certain dexterity with words and a feeling for music. . . the infinite patience of the gemsetter, compatibility with the composer and an understanding of the various personalities in a cast.” Difficulties invariably arise. Songs one loves are canceled from shows, some performers insist on alterations in what one has written, others perform them poorly, the whims of producers are weighed, disputes over royalties emerge, entire shows are closed down for want of public taste.” 

The slow and deliberate process of lyricology is reflected in this photograph of Ira laying before a fire in his Beverly Hills home, pipe in mouth, pen in hand and, assumedly, blank notebook before him.

As you read through Michael richly detailed biography replete with anecdotes, jokes, and example lyrics, the reader comes to understand what Alexandra Jacobs meant when she wrote the following in her New York Times review of his work:

"Owen gives this perpetual supporting player an infusion of main-character energy. He succeeds. Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words is dignified but not starchy, efficient but not shallow, and honest about grief's unrelenting toll. . . . Owen captures elegantly his survivor guilt, flying home for the grand funeral of his brother . . . . George Gershwin's presence in this book is not only spectral; it's almost holy . . . .

Life's plodders can be as interesting and amusing, in their way, as the sprinters. . . . You feel deeply for the oldest Gershwin brother, who tended George's legacy like a faithful gardener."

Returning to Joseph Epstein who beautifully summarizes the reading experience of Michael’s Ira Gershwin biography:

"The reader comes away from Mr. Owen's Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words with a strong appreciation for all that the craft of the lyricist entails. . . .More important, at the close of Mr. Owen's biography one feels that one knows Ira Gershwin — knows him and likes him. In these pages we learn what the world thought of Ira Gershwin, what his co-workers and family thought of him, and, through Mr. Owen's careful mining of his subject's letters and diaries and pronouncements, what he thought of himself."

This concluding statement is drawn from the publisher WW Norton’s press release:

“The Pulitzer Prize-winning American lyricist Ira Gershwin (1896-1983) has been hailed as one of the masters of the Great American Songbook—songs written largely for Broadway and Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s. Now, in the first full-length biography devoted to his life, Ira Gershwin steps out at last from the long shadow cast by his younger and more famous brother George.

It's a life with a sharp dividing line; we witness Ira's transformation by George's death at thirty-eight. From carefree dreamer and successful lyricist, he becomes guardian of his brother's legacy and manager of complex family dynamics, even while continuing to practice his craft with composers like Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern.

Drawing on extensive archival sources and often using Ira's own words, Michael Owen offers a rich portrait of the modest man who penned the words to many of America's best-loved songs.” For order information, go here.