extraordinary music, extraordinarily American ~

just an arbitrary selection:

Blues in the Night
Let’s Fall in Love
Stormy Weather
The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
This Time the Dream’s on Me
That Old Black Magic
Ac-cent-chu-ate the Positive
Come Rain or Come Shine
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead
Paper Moon
One for my Baby and One More for the Road
Written in the Stars
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues

all those great songs, you can’t quite think who wrote ’em?
Harold Arlen wrote ’em.

on some occasions his own co-lyricist with Truman Capote, he collaborated extensively with Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Ted Koehler and Johnny Mercer...

and out of all the cantor’s sons who found their way to Tin Pan Alley, Arlen had the ear most keenly tuned to what was happening ’way uptown...

many of his songs find quite an exquisite expression on Ella Fitzgerald’s Harold Arlen Songbook, a current Verve rerelease. Here, in contrast with the elegant and understated stylings of Buddy Bregman on the Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hart collections, the Billy May orchestra is really, really hot...