“Over the Rainbow: The Music of Harold Arlen" at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts -- October 5.
Saturday, October 5, 7 p.m.
Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, 1301 Fifth Street, Coralville IA
From the vaudeville circuit to Broadway, Harold Arlen composed songs that have remained popular for almost 100 years, and on October 5, the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts' American Songbook series will celebrate that legacy in Over the Rainbow: The Music of Harold Arlen, a night of unforgettable tunes including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “Stormy Weather,” I’ve Got the World on a String,” and “The Man That Got Away."
Born Hyman Arluck in 1905, Arlen was an American composer of popular music who composed more than 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz (lyrics by Yip Harburg) including "Over the Rainbow," which won him the Oscar for Best Original Song, he was nominated as composer for eight additional Academy Awards. With Arlen a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook, "Over the Rainbow" was voted the 20th century's number-one song by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Arlen learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman, and Eddie Duchin, usually singing his own compositions. In 1929, Arlen composed his first well-known song: "Get Happy" (with lyrics by Ted Koehler). Throughout the early and mid-1930s, Arlen and Koehler wrote shows for the Cotton Club, a popular Harlem night club, as well as for Broadway musicals and Hollywood films. Arlen and Koehler's partnership resulted in a number of hit songs, including the familiar standards "Let's Fall in Love" and "Stormy Weather," and continued to perform as a pianist and vocalist with some success, most notably on records with Leo Reisman's society dance orchestra.
In the mid-1930s, Arlen married, and spent increasing time in California, writing for movie musicals. It was at this time that he began working with lyricist E. Y. "Yip" Harburg. In 1938, the team was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz. They also wrote "Down with Love" (featured in the 1937 Broadway show Hooray for What!), "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" for Groucho Marx in At the Circus in 1939, and "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" for Ethel Waters in the 1943 movie Cabin in the Sky. In the 1940s, he teamed up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, and continued to write hit songs like "Blues in the Night," "Out of this World," "That Old Black Magic," "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home," "Come Rain or Come Shine," and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)." Arlen also composed "The Man That Got Away," which was written for the 1954 version of A Star Is Born starring Judy Garland. At her famous 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, after finishing a set of his songs, Garland acknowledged Arlen in the audience and invited him to receive an ovation.
Presented by Josh Sazon and Wes Habley, Over the Rainbow: The Music of Harold Arlen will be performed at the Coralville Center for the Performing Arts on October 5, admission to the 7 p.m. concert event is $10-20, and more information and tickets are available by calling 319-366-8203 and visiting CoralvilleArts.org.
