WPL02032 – Unsung Songwriters of the Great American Songbook

Most of the words to the songs of the “The Great American Songbook” were written by lyricists we recognize as household names. Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, and Johnny Mercer account for 250 of these songs. But the songbook includes many more songs, and some of the most popular were written by songwriters who wrote only one or a few. This presentation will look at these great but unsung songwriters’ lives and times, and the audience will listen to some of their best-known songs. “Misty”, by Johnny Burke, “As Time Goes By”, by Herman Hupfeld, “I’ll be Seeing You”, by Irving Kahal, “Stardust”, by Mitchell Parish, and “It Was a Very Good Year”, by Ervin Drake are a few of the songs we will explore and enjoy. Visual images, audio, and video clips will be used to enhance the program, including video clips of performances by the singers who made the songs famous.