Read on Twitter
Now feels like as good a time as any to remind everyone that Andrew Lloyd-Webber didn't write 'Over the Rainbow'... or any of songs from the original Wizard of Oz (which came out in 1939).
We should all talk more about E.Y. 'Yip' Harburg and Harold Arlen (who did). [1]
![Now feels like as good a time as any to remind everyone that Andrew Lloyd-Webber didn't write 'Over the Rainbow'... or any of songs from the original Wizard of Oz (which came out in 1939).We should all talk more about E.Y. 'Yip' Harburg and Harold Arlen (who did). [1]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYncRLOXQAIyDni.jpg "Now feels like as good a time as any to remind everyone that Andrew Lloyd-Webber didn't write 'Over the Rainbow'... or any of songs from the original Wizard of Oz (which came out in 1939).We should all talk more about E.Y. 'Yip' Harburg and Harold Arlen (who did). [1]")
We should all talk more about E.Y. 'Yip' Harburg and Harold Arlen (who did). [1]
Arlen wrote so many incredible songs that EVERYONE knows but still his name gets mentioned much less frequently than contemporaries of his like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, or Richard Rodgers. [2]
The man that wrote the melody to 'Over the Rainbow' also wrote the music for 'Get Happy', 'Let's Fall in Love', 'The Man That Got Away', 'Ac-Cent-Tchuate the Positive', 'That Old Black Magic' and 'Come Rain or Come Shine'. [3]
Yip Harburg not only wrote the lyrics for the songs in The Wizard of Oz, he was its final script editor and penned some of the dialogue. He also wrote the lyrics to Finian's Rainbow, which features ageless standards like 'How Are Things in Glocca Morra?' and 'Old Devil Moon' [4]
With Arlen, he wrote absolute bangers like 'Happiness is a Thing Called Joe', 'Lydia, the Tattooed Lady' & 'It's Only a Paper Moon'. And don't forget, he also wrote the anthem of the Depression, 'Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?' [5]
My favourite Yip Harburg story is that he went to the same school as Ira Gershwin (Townsend Harris High School in NYC). Their names being so close to each other in the alphabet they sat next to each other in class and bonded over the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. [6]
Harburg and Gershwin talked G&S, worked on the school newspaper together and became life-long friends. Imagine being in that class, seeing these two kids geeking out over English operettas, not knowing that they would go on to write Porgy & Bess and The Wizard of Oz. [7]
N.B. I'm no expert on these guys, I just think they were geniuses & it's weird we don't talk about them more. Meanwhile other (wildly successful) living artists attach themselves to their work as though it were their own
Do add to this if you've got cool stories! @jenashtep [8]
Do add to this if you've got cool stories! @jenashtep [8]
