The Man That Got Away
The Life and Songs of Harold Arlen
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
“Over the Rainbow,” “Stormy Weather,” and “One for My Baby” are just a few of Harold Arlen’s well-loved compositions. Yet his name is hardly known--except to the musicians who venerate him. At a gathering of songwriters George Gershwin called him “the best of us.” Irving Berlin agreed. Paul McCartney sent him a fan letter and became his publisher. Bob Dylan wrote of his fascination with Arlen’s “bittersweet, lonely world.” A cantor’s son, Arlen believed his music was from a place outside himself, a place that also sent tragedy. When his wife became mentally ill and was institutionalized he turned to alcohol. It nearly killed him. But the beautiful songs kept coming: “Blues in the Night,” “My Shining Hour,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and “The Man That Got Away.”
Walter Rimler drew on interviews with friends and associates of Arlen and on newly available archives to write this intimate portrait of a genius whose work is a pillar of the Great American Songbook.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harold Arlen is likely not a household name, nor is he remembered today outside of certain musical circles. Music historian Rimler (George Gershwin) remedies this neglect in this sometimes pedestrian but often deeply illuminating and moving biography of the man who gave us "Over the Rainbow" and "Stormy Weather." Drawing on interviews with Arlen's friends and fellow musicians, Rimler traces Arlen's life from his childhood as the son of a cantor in a Buffalo synagogue and his early love of jazz and dance bands to his marriage to Anya Taranda and his collaborations with Yip Harburg and Ira Gershwin, among others, as well as the rise and decline of the musical culture in which composers like Arlen flourished. Rimler follows Arlen's slow and patient ascent to the pinnacle of success with the composition of "Over the Rainbow" for The Wizard of Oz, a song initially cut from the movie but one that Judy Garland so well made her own that listeners think of it as her song, not associating it with Arlen. As his wife slides slowly into the inferno of madness brought on by a brain tumor, Arlen himself descends into the hell of alcohol abuse, from which he recovered, though never to achieve the height of his early success. Rimler's study ensures that Arlen's story and his contributions to music will not be forgotten.
