Pianista e compositor Hyman Arluck, conhecido mundialmente como Harold Arlen, nasceu em Buffalo, New York, no 15 de fevereiro de 1905, filho de um lider (puxador) de orações na sinagoga. O irmão gêmeo faleceu um dia após o nascimeto.
Aprendeu a tocar piano e formou uma banda na juvetude. No inicio dos anos 20 foi tentar a sorte em Nova York como pianista em uma companhia de vaudeville. Mudou o nome para Harold Arlen e apareceu ocasionalmente como vocalista de banda, cantando as suas composições nos discos de The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe Venuti, Leo Reisman e Eddie Duchin .
Em 1939, compôs com Ted Koehler, "Get Happy" a sua primeira canção de sucesso. Até meados dos anos 30, Arlen e Koehler escreveram para os shows do clube de jazz Cotton Club, um dos mais populares do Harlem, como também para os musicais da Broadway e filmes de Hollywood.
As canções da dupla que mais fizeram sucesso foram "Stormy Weather" e "Let's Fall in Love". As composições de Arlen foram bem aceitas pelos músicos de jazz, devido a incorporação que ele fazia dos sentimentos do blues, ao idioma das musicas populares.
Nos anos 40 em parceria com Johnny Mercer escreveu "Blues in the Night","That Old Black Magic", "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive, "Any Place I Hang my Hat is Home" e "One More for my Baby (One More for the Road). Com “Over the Rainbow”, ganhou o Oscar de Melhor Canção (original) em 1939, no filme The Wizard of Oz.
Harold Arlen, faleceu em abril de 1986.
Harold canta e toca "The Man That Got Away"
Pianist and composer Hyman Arluck, aka, Harold Arlen, was born on February 15,1905 in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned the piano as a youth and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer and moved to New York City where he landed a job as accompanist in vaudeville.
At this point, he 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." Arlen continued to perform as a pianist and vocalist with some success, most notably on records with Leo Resiman's society dance orchestra.
Arlen's compositions have always been popular with jazz musicians because of his facility at incorporating a blues feeling into the idiom of the conventional American popular song.
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, the team was hired by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer to compose songs for The Wizard of Oz. The most famous of these is the song "Over the Rainbow" for which they won the Academy AWward for Best Music, Original Song" They also wrote "Down with Love", a song later featured in the 2003 movie Down with Love.
Arlen was a longtime friend and former roommate of actor Ray Bolger who would star in The Wizard of Oz, the film for which "Over the Rainbow" was written.
In the 1940s, he teamed up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, and continued to write hit songs like "Blues in the Night", "That Old Black Magic," "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" .
In the 1940s, he teamed up with lyricist Johnny Mercer, and continued to write hit songs like "Blues in the Night", "That Old Black Magic," "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" .
Arlen composed two defining tunes which bookend Judy Carland's musical persona: as a yearning, innocent girl in "Over the Rainbow" and a world-weary, "chic chanteuse" with "The Man that Got Away".
Harold Arlen passed away on April, 1986.
Reference - Wikipédia
Tradução de Humberto Amorim
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