Harold Arlen

Happy Birthday Harold Arlen 1905-1986...Pianist, singer and above all composer, Arlen wrote over 500 songs in his lifetime, many of them becoming enduring standards still played today. As a boy he was fascinated by ragtime and formed his own band at the age of 15. By age 19 he was in NYC arranging for Fletcher Henderson, working as a rehearsal pianist for theater and radio and writing and singing his own music for his group the Buffalodians.

In 1929 he composed his first hit song "Get Happy" with lyricist Ted Koehler, a partner he would work with throughout the mid-30s writing shows for The Cotton Club, Broadway musicals and Hollywood films.

For most of his life he would do his primary work for films with esteemed lyricists Johnny Mercer, Dorothy Fields, Yip Harburg and Ira Gershwin pinning such classics as "Let's Fall in Love". "Stormy Weather", "Blues in the Night", "That Old Black Magic", "Come Rain or Come Shine", "I've Got the World on a String", "Devil and the Deep Blue Sea", "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "Over the Rainbow" voted the 20th century's number one song by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Arlen's music has been covered extensively by jazz musicians because of his ability to incorporate a blues feeling into the conventional American song.