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Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular MusicA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y ZHARBURG, Yip(b Isidore Hochberg, 8 April 1894, NYC; d 5 March 1981, Hollywood, in a car crash) Lyricist. 'Yip' was from 'yipsel', 'squirrel'; ASCAP gives birth date of 1896, other sources say 1898. He went to school with Ira Gershwin; worked as a journalist and wrote verse on the side, but ran an electrical business during the 1920s until the business failed during the Great Depression, whereupon George Gershwin told him to pick up a pencil and get a rhyming dictionary: he never filed bankruptcy, but paid off all his debts; the financial disaster set him free. He wrote 'Brother Can You Spare A Dime' with Jay Gorney (b Daniel Jayson, 12 December 1896, Bialystok, Russia; d 14 June 1990), 'April In Paris' with Vernon Duke and 'It's Only A Paper Moon' with Harold Arlen, all in 1932. His biggest successes were with Arlen, including songs for the Wizard Of Oz film including 'Over The Rainbow'. (Harburg was a script supervisor, and wrote the scene where the Wizard gives out the brain, the heart and the courage, but got no credit for that.) Harburg and Arlen wrote 'Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe', sung by Ethel Waters in the 1940 show Cabin In The Sky, a song for a poor black woman who has nothing she can call her own except the man in her life ('He has a smile that makes the lilacs wanna grow'). He also worked with Jerome Kern, Sammy Fain and others, including Burton Lane: their show Finian's Rainbow '47 included 'How Are Things In Glocca Morra?' and 'That Old Devil Moon'. Harburg had grown up in extreme poverty in New York's lower east side and was a a lifelong socialist; many of his works were political statements in their way. Harburg was blacklisted during the McCarthy era: he could not work on a film until 1962 because Hollywood was afraid of the sort of idiot politicians who thought that 'Happiness Is Just A Thing Called Joe' was about Joseph Stalin. Today Finians's Rainbow is mounted by high school kids every year. |