Ari Axelrod’s CD, A Place for Us: A Celebration of Jewish Broadway, released Jan. 17 2025 by PS Classics, features a medley of two seldom performed lyrics by Yip: “Adrift on a Star” (from the 1961 Broadway musical The Happiest Girl in the World and set to the music of … Continue Reading ››
Category Archives: Featured
IRA GERSHWIN: A LIFE IN WORDS
Lyricist Ira Gershwin, Yip's friend since their high school days together beginning in 1910, is now the subject of the first-ever biography devoted to Ira's life, Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words. Author Michael Owen, using archival sources including Ira's own words, creates a rich portrait of the lesser-known brother … Continue Reading ››
HAROLD ARLEN AND HIS SONGS
Coming from Oxford University Press on July 26, 2024, Harold Arlen and His Songs by Walter Frisch is the first comprehensive book about the music of one of the great song composers of the twentieth century. Arlen was Yip Harburg’s most frequent composer-collaborator (they wrote over 150 songs together from 1932 to … Continue Reading ››
Over the Rainbow: The Life and Rhymes of Yip Harburg
Over the Rainbow: The Life and Rhymes of Yip Harburg by Stuart Stotts was released in paperback in September 2015 by Big Valley Press. It is also available as a Kindle book.
HUFFINGTON POST: ERNIE HARBURG REMINISCES ABOUT YIP
On Aug. 6, 2015 the Huffington Post published "Lyricist Yip Harburg's Son Ernie: How My Dad Inspired Me to Become a Scientist" by Mike Sigman based on an essay by Ernie entitled "Yip and I."
The Yip Harburg Songbook
The Yip Harburg Songbook. Piano/vocal sheets to 34 songs including "Over the Rainbow," "It's Only a Paper Moon," "April in Paris," "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady," "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" "Old Devil Moon," and an illustrated introductory essay by Stephen Holden. Hal Leonard Publishers, 2009.
Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz?
Who Put the Rainbow in The Wizard of Oz? Yip Harburg, Lyricist. by Harold Meyerson and Ernie Harburg. 454 pages, black-and-white and color illustrations. University of Michigan Press, 1993. Paperback edition, 1995.
Harriet Alonso. Yip Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist
Harriet Alonso. Yip Harburg: Legendary Lyricist and Human Rights Activist. Wesleyan University Press, 2012. 305 pages, with illustrations. This interview-based biography is, in the author's words, "a study of the lyrical world of Yip Harburg, as told largely by Yip himself through interviews, speeches, song lyrics, and poems."
Rhymes for the Irreverent
Rhymes for the Irreverent. Reissued January 2006 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. This hardcover edition incorporates the 1965 and 1976 editions of the two books cited above, plus several newly discovered, previously unpublished poems. Seymour Chwast, who illustrated the original 1965 Rhymes for the Irreverent, created new pen-and-ink drawings for this edition.