Jerome Kern once said, "Irving Berlin was American Music" but I oftenly find myself refuting such a staement. I love Berlin, but there are several other individuals and song writters who have had a bigger effect on The Great American Song Book. Case and point being Mr. Richard Rodgers, the song writer of musicals such as "Pal Joey", "Oklahoma!", "Carousel" and many others. In a career spaning over three decades, he helped cahnge the great white way of Broadway with his inventive melodys, many of which are certifiable American standards.

I can't claim to know much about his childhood. It was a fairly happy one, born to a caucasian family in New York and showing a gift for music. Draged into Broadway in the 1920's he teamed up with lyricist Lorenz Hart and took on Broadway by storm. These men wind up being very different individuals. Hart was a challgening man, a drinker, scoundral, who was often difficult to locate while on his drinking binges and his homosexual escapdes. Rodgers was a straight, respectable young man, only still in his twenties creating aname for himself and Hartz with their big break comes with "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" a 1927 musical which result with a score coming up with hits like "My Heart Stood Still" and "Thou Swell".

With Hart's witty and urbane lyrics, the melodies of Rodgers were perfectly blended. As time went along, tey collaborated on more stage productions with other songs like "Manhattan", "Blue Moon" and others being hits as well. One highlight in particular comes to mind during the period following "A Conneticut Yankee..", which would be "On Your Toes". A mix of legitimate ballet with modern American music, it was quite a sensation at the time with Rodgers adding concert compositions to his creit with his masterpice appearing in "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue". ALthough immortolized by Gene Kelly and Vera Ellen in the 1940's, the original staged version was alot more incindiary with Ray Bolger (His name sound familiar? The Wizard of Oz, perhaps?) dancing with a dead woman to evade Mafia hitmen inside of a dance hall. Along with the Geroge Balancine coreography, this segemnt became the highlight of the musical and helped "Salughter..." to become a staple in American Concert Pieces.

In 1937, the team came upon a new production: "Babes in Arms", a musical about small-town childen putting together a Broadway callibur production. The score for this musical included four standards: "Where or When?", "I Wish I Were IN Love Again", "The Lady is a Tramp" and "My Funny Valentine". Such a witty score was written for a play about such a semingly juvinile story, yet again it was another big hit inspiring a 1940 adaptation with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland staring. Of course, nothing beat the original production which really did employ a bunch of unknown kids in the cast.

"My Funny Valentine", "The Lady is a Tramp" and "Where or When" have progressivley become highlights in American Popular music, the latter being popular come Valentine's Day. "Where or When?" has also become a hugely popular piece with it's wonderful music and those pogniant lyrics by Hart and this is proof that as their association grew with age, so it grew with quality culminating in the masterpiece of the Broadway Musical in the 1940's: Pal Joey.

The idea was to bring to stage the story of a small time nightclub employee who is romancing a good and beautiful choros girl and a rich widow with a fat pocket book. He was a heel, plain and simple and to star as the heal they chose a small time hoofer who was fairly new to the town named Gene Kelly. The score was sherly mgnificent as Rodgers and Harts were able to bring the colorful cahrecters to life, bringing a new spin to the musical and paving the way for the future of the stage. With songs like "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", "I Could Write A Book", they pushed the envelope with the content which didn't play dumb to the acts of sex or of the cruel ways of the world, and when it opened on Christmas Day, 1940 the buzz was amazing. It was so damned huge, you cannot fathom it! It was a referenshing turn with no happy endings or given preconceptions,just truth and humanity in it. Kelly went to Hollywood, the songwriting team of Rodgers and Hart became national sensations and they wrote a place for themselves in the history book.

But their bliss could not last. Hart's drinking had progressing, inhibited his writing ability, haulted productions and along with this, his health was failing him and so in 1942, Dick Rodgers found himself without a songwritng partner and his career in question but ready to work with a new writer who'm would take him to immortality.

When I return tommorow, we'll cover his association with Oscar Hammerstein II and their work.

I know this isn't my greatest work. It was, as is all my work, a spur of the moment thing.