Category Archives: harold arlen

Let’s Fall In Love, Arlen and Koehler’s Third 1933 Hit

Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler wrote Let’s Fall in Love in 1933, the same year as their hits Stormy Weather and It’s Only a Paper Moon (two songs featured in my recent blog posts). Several years ago, I realized that … Continue reading

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Stormy Weather, the Raining Blues

It seems particularly appropriate to include Stormy Weather in this Harold Arlen series of blog posts considering the amount of rain that we had in New England during the past few weeks. If you’re like me, you encountered several detours … Continue reading

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It’s Only a Paper Moon, Fanciful and Fun

If you’ve been following my posts on American Popular Songbook composers and lyricists during the past months, you may have noticed that many of these well-known creative artists adopted stage names. The two lyricists who collaborated with Harold Arlen (as … Continue reading

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Get Happy with Harold Arlen

The first time I played Get Happy was appropriately enough for the first of six annual jazz worship services that I directed at the Hartford Street Presbyterian Church in Natick, MA. Although I had led jazz worship services as a … Continue reading

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Blues in the Night, Mercer Meets Arlen

Recently, I wrote about how lyricist Johnny Mercer was inspired to write the first of his train-themed songs I Thought About You while on a train trip to Chicago. Less than two years after this brief collaboration with composer Jimmy … Continue reading

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