Facing the Music
David Lehman, author of ‘A Fine Romance,’ offers insights into the American songbook
| 7:00 AM Oct 12, 2009
It’s astonishing how many hits from the American songbook—the corpus of music written from the 1920s to the 1960s that includes Broadway hits, Tin Pan Alley tunes, and Hollywood musicals—were written by Jews. These Jewish composers and lyricists included heavy hitters like Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and the Gershwins, plus perhaps lesser known figures ...
