BBC Radio 2 - Barry Manilow - They Write The Songs

[Vincent]

Barry Manilow looks at the lives and works of ten famous composers of the Great American Songbook. He explores their genius through rare recordings and de-constructs their songs at his piano.

Recorded at Barry's home in America, the series gives a songwriter's insight into the art and craft of songwriting. It covers over sixty years of composition examining the work of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Jule Styne, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerry Herman and Kander and Ebb. Among the rare recordings are songs by Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, and a never before heard Barry Manilow recording, made when he was three years old.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

Please login or register to see this link.

GeorgeGershwin

George Gershwin is the first composer in the spotlight, who left school in 1913 to pursue a career as a song plugger and composer in New York's Tin Pan Alley. His first hit song was Swanee, which was recorded by Al Jolson in 1920. He went on to create an impressive body of work, including celebrated musicals like Funny Face; jazz standards and popular songs like They Can't Take That Away from Me [which was posthumously nominated for an Oscar]; and the ambitious opera Porgy and Bess.

Irving Berlin

This week, he looks at Irving Berlin, a self-taught pianist and composer who published more than fifteen hundred songs. He began writing music for Tin Pan Alley and Broadway in the 1920s and also worked on musical films starring Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby and other Hollywood stars, penning classic hits like White Christmas. Berlin was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 10 January 1977, in recognition of his long career and contribution to the popular culture of the United States.

Harold Arlen

This week he celebrates Harold Arlen, composer of the Oscar-winning song Over The Rainbow, who was born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, New York, back in 1905.

Harold sang in the synagogue where his father was cantor, from the age of seven, and formed his first group (the Snappy Trio) whilst still in his teens. After moving to New York City in 1925, Arlen achieved fame by writing songs for various reviews and for the shows at Harlem's Cotton Club. Many of his songs, including Stormy Weather, became jazz standards whilst songs like That Old Black Magic also had their roots in jazz.

During a long, and successful career, Harold wrote over 400 songs and collaborated with the likes of Ted Koehler, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.

Frank Loesser

Born in New York in 1910, Loesser was briefly a newspaper reporter before his first lyrics (In Love with the Memory of You) were published in 1931. He moved to Hollywood where he wrote songs for dozens of films and whilst serving in World War II, he began writing music in addition to words. His compositions included Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition, Heart and Soul [aka Chopsticks - the music was written by Hoagy Carmichael] and he picked up an Oscar in 1949 for Baby, It's Cold Outside.

His major film score was Hans Christian Andersen (1952), which provided Danny Kaye with several memorable songs, while his stage successes included Guys and Dolls (1953) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1963) which is currently playing on Broadway, with Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

Frank died of lung cancer in 1969 and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame the following year.

Leonard Bernstein

Barry Manilow turns his attention to the composer Leonard Bernstein, who was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on 25 August 1918.

Bernstein is particularly unusual - whereas Gershwin was a popular composer who aspired to write classical music - Bernstein was a classical musician who wrote popular music. Through musical successes such as On The Town, Candide and West Side Story he brought a complexity of arranging styles and musicianship that was unrivalled amongst Broadway composers.

Barry shows how Bernstein's ability to orchestrate his own melodies had such a great impact on musical theatre and defined Bernstein as a composer. As he deconstructs West Side Story's Officer Krupke, Barry illustrates Bernstein's expert use of dissonant chords and rhythm structures.

Jule Styne

Barry Manilow continues to look at the lives and works of his favourite composers, de-constructing their songs at his piano. This week he celebrates Jule Styne, the vocal coach turned Broadway and Hollywood composer, who was born in England in 1905.

During a successful career, which included collaborations with Frank Loesser (previously featured in this series), Sammy Cahn (Time After Time), Leo Robin (Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend) and Stephen Sondheim (Gypsy), Styne won two Grammy awards, a Tony award, an Oscar and was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame.

This programme includes a never-before-heard Barry Manilow recording, made when he was just three years old. Barry's grandfather recognised that his young grandson had talent and at the weekend they would take a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, into Manhattan, where there was a recording booth. You put in a quarter and made a recoding and, remarkably, the ones Barry made in this way have survived! We hear evidence of Barry's precocious talent in a tune written by Jule Styne, Papa Won't You Dance with Me.

Rodgers and Hart

Richard Rodgers wrote with Larry Hart for twenty years in one of the most successful of songwriting partnerships. He then went on to write with Oscar Hammerstein for another twenty years - a feat which no other composer has equalled. Tonight we begin a two part exploration of the work of Richard Rodgers, beginning with his relationship with Lorenz Hart.

The son of German immigrants, lyricist Lorenz Hart began his theatrical career by translating German plays, while the New York-born Richard Rodgers studied composition at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School), before their partnership began in 1919. After five years of failure Rodgers was about to give up and become a clothing salesman, when the two had a breakthrough hit - Manhattan.

From that point on Rodgers and Hart created an almost unbroken stream of hits, including the shows On Your Toes, A Connecticut Yankee and Pal Joey. Among the pair's songs: My Romance; The Lady Is a Tramp; and a song that started life as The Prayer, followed by The Bad in Every Man, before becoming a smash hit as - Blue Moon.

Rodgers and Hammerstein

The grandson of theatre impresario Oscar Hammerstein, Oscar II was writing books and lyrics for Broadway musicals by the early 1920s. Among his early collaborators were Vincent Youmans, Rudolph Friml and Jerome Kern (with whom he wrote Showboat in 1927), before he formed his famous partnership with Richard in 1943.

During their 16-year collaboration, Rodgers and Hammerstein produced the enduring classics Oklahoma! Carousel, The King and I, The Sound of Music and the Pulitzer Prize-winning South Pacific.

After Hammerstein's death in 1960, Rodgers wrote his own lyrics to No Strings and collaborated with Stephen Sondheim on Do I Hear a Waltz. His last show was 1970's Two by Two.

Jerry Herman

Gerald Herman was born in New York in 1931 and raised in Jersey. Self-taught as a musician, he studied drama at the University of Miami, where he began writing for revue. His first big success on Broadway came with 1961's Milk and Honey, which picked up Grammy and Tony nominations, but it was Hello, Dolly! that really launched him into the big time.

Opening in 1964, Hello, Dolly! ran for ran for 2,844 performances and became Broadway's longest-running musical. It won ten Tony awards, including Best Composer and Lyricist, while the 1969 film adaptation picked up three Oscars. Herman's later works include Mame, Mack and Mabel, and La Cage Aux Folles, while subsequent accolades include the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein Awards, induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a Tony Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award, and a 2010 Kennedy Center Honor.

Kander and Ebb

They've been rewarded with Tonys on Broadway, Oscars in films, and Emmys on television, and as Kennedy Center honourees they were praised for tackling "serious, challenging subjects - Nazism, abortion, murder, capital punishment, prison torture, greed, corruption - with an originality and fearlessness rarely seen in popular entertainment".

Kander and Ebb were behind some of the great creations of the musical stage including Cabaret, Chicago, Kiss of the Spider Woman, as well as New York, New York, a song immortalized by Frank Sinatra. As a neighbour of Fred Ebb's in New York, Barry Manilow was the first to hear the famous opening vamp of this tune. He heard it over and over again, as the pair searched for the lyric, while brushing his teeth in the bathroom!

[Juul]

Ben ik wel blij mee!

Juul

[rauhfaser]

Helaas: '' invalid or deleted''. Heb ik te lang gewacht?

Edwin

[Vincent]

Ik upload ze wel even opnieuw Edwin, ik heb iets te veel opruimd.

[Vincent]

Ze werken weer.

[h.roos]

na de serie met pink floyd door juul weer zoon geweldige serie,dank daar voor.is er ook zoon programma met of over shirley bassey.h.roos

[Gast dancedar]

Wonderful, bedankt!

Heeft u Series 2?

Ook Rodgers & Hammerstein (http://www.mediafire.com/?qez695efurujmu9) zegt: "Permission denied" - re-upload?

[Gast dancedar]

Wonderful, bedankt!

Heeft u Series 2?

Ook Rodgers & Hammerstein (http://www.mediafire.com/?qez695efurujmu9) zegt: "Permission denied" - re-upload?

[Gast dancedar]

Wonderful, bedankt!

Heeft u Series 2?

Ook Rodgers & Hammerstein (http://www.mediafire.com/?qez695efurujmu9) zegt: "Permission denied" - re-upload?

[Vincent]

Ook Rodgers & Hammerstein (http://www.mediafire.com/?qez695efurujmu9) zegt: "Permission denied" - re-upload?

http://www.mijnbestand.nl/Bestand-46XFHBBJCYOL.mp3

[Vincent]

Ook Rodgers & Hammerstein (http://www.mediafire.com/?qez695efurujmu9) zegt: "Permission denied" - re-upload?

http://www.mijnbestand.nl/Bestand-46XFHBBJCYOL.mp3

[Vincent]

Ook Rodgers & Hammerstein (http://www.mediafire.com/?qez695efurujmu9) zegt: "Permission denied" - re-upload?

http://www.mijnbestand.nl/Bestand-46XFHBBJCYOL.mp3

[vanderpd]

I have come late onto this fantastic series, but I could only download 5 of the 10.

I hope that you can once again re-upload: IrvinBerlin, FrankLoesser, LeonardBernstein, JuleStyne, & Rogers&Hammerstein.

Thank you very much for all your efforts in making this series available.