Chapter 8: Broadway and Musical Theater
Chapter 8: Introduction
The 1910s and 1920s saw new forms of musical theater that combined song with narrative and stage display that reflected the nation's growing appetite for entertainment. Before this shift, vaudeville and operetta—a lighter, often comedic form of opera that combined spoken dialogue with songs and orchestral music—dominated popular theater. Among the new formats gaining popularity was the revue, exemplified by productions like the Ziegfeld Follies. These shows featured a series of loosely connected popular songs, comic sketches, and dance routines, which operated as variety programs rather than narrative dramas.
At the same time, an increasingly cohesive and narrative-driven form of musical theater was beginning to take shape: the book musical. In this structure, songs were woven directly into the plot, with characters using music to advance the story and articulate motives or conflicts. This approach brought greater emotional resonance and dramatic continuity to the stage, a model later adopted by Broadway composers and producers.
New York City was the geographical epicenter of this theatrical and musical development. Tin Pan Alley, the bustling district of music publishers and songwriters, supplied Broadway with a constant stream of new songs. Just blocks away, the street known as Broadway had already become the primary corridor for commercial theater. Originally a Native American trail, Broadway became one of the city's main thoroughfares. As the city grew, theaters migrated uptown, eventually clustering around Times Square. Broadway's proximity to Times Square offered high foot traffic, bright electric signage, and easy access via the city's expanding subway system, making it the ideal location for commercial theater.
By the early 20th century, "Broadway" had become synonymous with American theatrical entertainment. Theaters lining the street produced a mix of dramas, comedies, and musical performances that drew large crowds. The proximity of Tin Pan Alley composers like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and George and Ira Gershwin played a central part in forming this emerging art form, as they worked closely with librettists who crafted the spoken dialogue and dramatic frameworks of these productions. While many musicals of the period had relatively short runs, their songs endured, becoming popular standards that formed the foundation of what would later be known as the Great American Songbook.
The Revue and The Book Musical.
In the early 20th century, American musical theater changed as producers moved away from vaudeville and operetta formats into more unified and artistically ambitious forms of popular entertainment. Two dominant formats took hold during this period: the revue and the book musical.
The revue, developed in part by producer George Lederer, became a widely popular format that combined newly written songs with dance and comic material into a single evening of entertainment. Unlike vaudeville, which assembled unrelated acts from various performers, revues featured cohesive productions each built around newly written material, although there was never a true narrative tying the pieces together. Among the most prestigious of these were the Ziegfeld Follies, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. From 1917 to 1931, the Follies captivated Broadway audiences with lavish costumes, elaborate sets, and spectacular musical numbers that exhibited the height of theatrical glamour. Other influential revues of the era included George White's Scandals, the Greenwich Village Follies, and the Music Box Revue, produced by Sam Harris and Irving Berlin.
Many of the most important Tin Pan Alley composers contributed to these revues, including Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin, helping to place popular songs directly inside theatrical settings. These collaborations enabled new songs to be introduced to audiences in theatrical contexts, often before they were published or recorded for mass consumption.
Although revues dominated Broadway during the 1910s and 1920s, a more cohesive and story-centered form of musical theater was taking shape: the book musical. In contrast to revues and vaudeville shows, which relied on loosely connected sketches and musical numbers, book musicals presented a unified narrative. Music, lyrics, and spoken dialogue worked together to advance the plot and develop characters, making songs central to storytelling rather than standalone entertainment.
Creating a book musical required a collaborative division of labor. The composer was responsible for writing the music, the lyricist crafted the song texts, and the librettist wrote the libretto, or spoken dialogue of the show. In some cases, the lyricist and librettist were the same individual, but more often these roles were separate. The librettist was frequently not the original author of the source material but instead adapted an existing story into dialogue and dramatic structure suitable for the stage.
Irving Berlin (born Israel Baline), who we first covered in our discussion of Tin Pan Alley, became one of the most foundational figures in American musical theater and popular song, and one of the most prolific songwriters in Broadway history. His early knack for parody—rewriting popular melodies with clever new lyrics—earned him modest success. While working at Pelham's Cafe in Chinatown, sweeping floors and singing, Berlin was asked by the pianist to help write lyrics for a new tune. The result, "Marie from Sunny Italy," earned Berlin and his collaborator just thirty-seven cents each, while the publisher pocketed hundreds. The experience gave Berlin a lasting lesson about the music business: own your work. He soon adopted the professional name Irving Berlin and set out to build a career on his own terms.
Berlin's rise was swift. By age 22, he had placed songs in several major Broadway revues, including the prestigious Ziegfeld Follies. He quickly developed a reputation for composing songs that balanced wit and emotional sentiment and had broad commercial appeal. Determined to maintain control over his work, Berlin founded his own publishing company, an uncommon move at the time that ensured he retained royalties and creative freedom. He went on to write scores for some of Broadway's most beloved shows, including As Thousands Cheer (1933), which featured the poignant ballad"Supper Time," Annie Get Your Gun (1946), which included the rousing anthem "There's No Business Like Show Business" and the charming duet "Anything You Can Do," and Call Me Madam (1950), with hits like "You're Just in Love." These songs created a model for the sound of the Broadway stage and the musical stylings of American musicals.
By mid-century, the book musical replaced revues as Broadway’s dominant format. Today, the terms "Broadway show" and "book musical" are often used interchangeably. However, this format was not an instant success. During the 1920s and 1930s, many early book musicals were commercial failures, and the plots are now largely forgotten. However, the songs survived, many of which have become standards. Many of these songs continued to circulate through recordings and revivals and remain fixtures in the American musical canon.
Jerome Kern
Alongside Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern (1885–1945) ranks among the most influential early composers in American musical theater. He played a decisive role in moving Broadway away from the loosely structured formats of revue and operetta toward the integrated book musical that would come to exemplify the so-called Golden Age of Broadway. Kern’s career unfolded within a wider cultural moment shaped by Jewish immigration and the central role Jewish artists played in the American entertainment industry during the early twentieth century.
Jewish immigrants, particularly those from Central and Eastern Europe, occupied positions across composing, publishing, performance, and promotion. Waves of emigration beginning in the 1880s were driven largely by rising antisemitism in Eastern Europe. Many of these immigrants arrived in the United States with limited English proficiency and little experience of urban American life, yet they shared a desire to assimilate into the larger American culture and, especially, to see their children become “real Americans.” By 1910, Jews constituted more than a quarter of New York City’s population, and young entrepreneurs from neighborhoods on the Lower East Side had secured footholds across a range of industries, including entertainment.
Vaudeville, Broadway, and later Hollywood became important pathways for upward mobility. Hundreds of Jewish performers worked the vaudeville circuit, with many achieving major celebrity status, including Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, George Jessel, Jack Benny, George Burns, and Milton Berle. Their success followed industry conditions that rewarded sales and audience appeal. For lower-class immigrants long excluded from economic advancement, music, dance, and comedy offered relatively open fields in which talent and persistence could translate into opportunity. By the early twentieth century, many of the most powerful theatrical booking agencies were Jewish-owned, and performers encountered less antisemitism in entertainment than in more established professions. For aspiring songwriters such as Berlin, Kern, and George Gershwin, the music business operated according to a pragmatic logic: if a song sold and generated profit for publishers, its creator was deemed successful.
Jewish musical traditions also influenced melodic contour and expressive phrasing. Elements of Jewish folk music, klezmer, and the sacred tradition of cantillation influenced the melodic contour and expressive style of Tin Pan Alley composers, becoming part of the larger musical vocabulary of American popular music. This cultural tension between heritage and assimilation is famously dramatized in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature-length sound film, which centers on a young Jewish cantor who becomes a popular singer despite his rabbi father's wishes.
Kern’s own musical background reflects this mixture of European training and American theatrical practice. He received a strong foundation in classical music and, after completing high school, was sent by his parents to Germany to study harmony, counterpoint, and music theory, a common route for aspiring composers at the time. Upon returning to the United States, Kern spent a formative year in London working as a rehearsal pianist for vaudeville and operetta productions. There, he developed a reputation as a “tune doctor,” someone adept at repairing weak melodies or harmonies to improve a song’s effectiveness.
By the time Kern returned to America, he was already recognized as a skilled pianist, arranger, and composer. Between 1905 and 1912, he wrote more than 100 songs for 31 stage musicals, adding to both British and American productions. Early songs such as “Yesterdays” and “The Last Time I Saw Paris” reveal his gift for melodic invention and lyrical sensitivity, qualities that would characterize his later work.
Kern’s most consequential achievement came in 1927 with Show Boat, created in collaboration with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II and based on a novel by Edna Ferber. The musical represented a decisive break from the episodic, lighthearted conventions of earlier Broadway shows by integrating music, character, and narrative into a unified dramatic structure. Show Boat addressed serious themes rarely explored on the musical stage, including racial prejudice, love, loss, and social mobility, and is widely regarded as one of the first fully realized book musicals in American theater history. Its score includes songs that continued in repertory, such as “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine” and “Ol’ Man River,” the latter becoming one of the most recognizable and frequently performed numbers in American musical history. Kern’s music combined operatic richness with elements of jazz and blues, demonstrating his capability to bridge classical technique with popular appeal.
The success of Show Boat provided a model for later Broadway musicals, showing how music, lyrics, and story could be integrated to produce a cohesive theatrical experience. Kern’s approach influenced later composers, including Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, whose collaborations developed some of the structural and expressive ideas first explored in Show Boat. Kern’s impact is evident both in his contributions to musical theater and in the many songs he wrote that have become part of the American songbook and continue to be performed today.
George Gershwin
George Gershwin is one of the few American composers who successfully combined popular music and classical composition with both exceptional musical skill and widespread commercial success. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1898, Gershwin began his musical career as a song plugger, playing new sheet music in publishing offices and music shops for Tin Pan Alley firms. By the age of fifteen, he had left high school to work full-time in the music industry, and by twenty-one, he had written his first major hit, “Swanee," which reached a national audience after Al Jolson recorded and performed it in blackface in the film Rhapsody In Blue (1945).
Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Gershwin composed hundreds of songs for revues, vaudeville shows, and eventually book musicals, many of which he wrote in collaboration with his older brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin (1896–1983). The brothers' creative partnership produced some of the most iconic songs in the American songbook, including "The Man I Love" (1924) “Strike Up the Band" (1927), "Embraceable You" (1928), and "I Got Rhythm" (1930).
"I Got Rhythm," in particular, illustrates a popular songwriting structure known as 32-bar AABA form, which became a defining structure of Broadway musicals in the 1920s and 1930s. The form consists of four eight-measure sections: two statements of the main melody, a contrasting middle section, and a return:
A – introduces the main melody.
A – repeats the melody.
B – introduces contrast (often a shift in harmony or mood.
A – returns to the original theme
The 32-bar form's predictable pattern gave audiences a familiar framework, while composers and lyricists introduced variations to keep songs engaging. This form allowed composers to repeat material while introducing contrast through harmony and text. The song "I Got Rhythm" notably popularized this form, and jazz musicians later reused its harmonic progression in new compositions and improvisations (known as "Rhythm Changes"). This practice is known as a contrafact, a compositional technique in which a new melody is written over an existing set of chord changes, allowing musicians to create original works while drawing on a familiar harmonic framework.
While Gershwin continued to compose for Broadway throughout his life, his ambitions extended into the classical music world. His breakthrough came in 1924 with the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, a concert work that combined jazz-derived material with symphonic forces. The piece was commissioned by Paul Whiteman, the popular bandleader, for a concert aimed at elevating jazz as an art form. Gershwin composed the piece in a matter of weeks, and its debut, with Gershwin himself at the piano, was a sensation.
Rhapsody in Blue opens with one of the most iconic gestures in American music: a slow, swooping clarinet glissando—a continuous slide between two notes—that immediately signaled something new was happening in American concert halls. The work combined jazzy syncopations, bluesy harmonies, and orchestral grandeur, demonstrating that American jazz and popular music could hold their own in a classical setting. This success launched Gershwin's parallel career as a composer of symphonic and theatrical works, helping to legitimize jazz-influenced music in the eyes of the classical establishment.
Gershwin's most ambitious work came near the end of his life: the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), created in collaboration with Ira Gershwin and author DuBose Heyward. Set in the African American community of Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, the opera masterfully fused classical structures with jazz, blues, and spirituals. Although its initial reception was mixed, Porgy and Bess has since been celebrated as a milestone in American opera and continues to be staged and recorded. The opera's iconic song"Summertime" has become a beloved standard, covered by a diverse range of artists, including jazz great Miles Davis and the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, fronted by Janis Joplin.
Tragically, Gershwin died at the young age of 38 in 1937 from a brain tumor, cutting short a career that had already reshaped American music. His ability to combine sophistication with accessibility, and his deep respect for both popular and classical traditions, made him one of the most important and enduring voices in 20th-century American culture.
Rodgers and Hart
One of the most prolific and influential teams to master the book musical was the songwriting duo of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Lorenz Hart. They began collaborating as teenagers and sustained their partnership while attending Columbia University. Their early work, including contributions to The Poor Little Ritz Girl (1920), showcased their clever, emotionally nuanced style on the Broadway stage. Although many of their initial shows struggled commercially, they still created songs that remained in repertory beyond their original productions, such as "With a Song in My Heart," which have become lasting classics.
In the late 1930s, Rodgers and Hart produced a series of commercially successful book musicals that integrated music and narrative more seamlessly than earlier revues. Two of their most famous works from this period were Babes in Arms (1937), which introduced the hit songs "My Funny Valentine" and "Where or When." Throughout their 25-year collaboration, Rodgers and Hart composed nearly 1,000 songs, many of which are now standards in both the Broadway and jazz repertoires.
Rodgers and Hammerstein
As Lorenz Hart’s health declined in the early 1940s as a result of a combination of alcoholism, depression, and chronic illness, his collaboration with Richard Rodgers became increasingly difficult. Hart’s unpredictable behavior and declining reliability made it challenging to sustain their creative partnership, leading Rodgers to seek a more stable collaborator. In 1942, Rodgers began working with Oscar Hammerstein II, a lyricist who had worked on Show Boat alongside Jerome Kern. Their collaboration initiated a shift toward tighter coordination between story, song, and character.
Their first project, Oklahoma! (1943) was among the earliest musicals in which each number clearly advanced the plot or revealed character, with songs such as “People Will Say We’re in Love” incorporated into the narrative rather than serving as standalone entertainment. The show achieved both commercial success and widespread recognition for its cohesive storytelling, a structure later adopted by many Broadway composers.
Following Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein created a series of works that combined accessible music with thoughtful narratives, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). These musicals introduced songs such as “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Climb Every Mountain,” and “My Favorite Things,” which have become familiar parts of the American musical repertoire. Their work addressed social and cultural issues—such as racism, war, and family dynamics—while maintaining clear character development and emotional coherence.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s reach went beyond Broadway through widely successful film adaptations, contributing to what is often referred to as the Golden Age of Broadway, from the 1940s through the early 1960s. Their approach to combining music and narrative helped define the structural expectations of the book musical. Today, their shows continue to be performed, recorded, and studied, and their methods for linking song to story remain foundational in musical theater practice.
Cole Porter
Born into a wealthy family in Peru, Indiana, Cole Porter was introduced to music early in life, studying violin and piano at the Marion Conservatory. He enrolled at Yale University in 1909, where he demonstrated his musical flair by writing "Bulldog" (1911), which remains the Yale football fight song today. In 1913, Porter moved on to Harvard, initially to study law, but soon shifted to music. By 1916, he had dropped out and begun composing full-length musicals.
Cole Porter spent his early years as a songwriter in Paris, where he lived a lavish expatriate life, known for hosting glittering parties attended by European aristocrats and artists. Although he had been writing musicals since the 1910s, his first major commercial successes came in 1929 with Wake Up and Dream and Fifty Million Frenchmen. Throughout the 1930s, Porter established himself as one of Broadway's most distinctive and celebrated composers with hit shows such as The Gay Divorce (1932), Anything Goes (1934), and DuBarry Was a Lady (1939).
Known for writing both words and music, Cole Porter reflected his intellectual depth and cosmopolitan worldview in his music. His lyrics distinguished themselves through sharp wit, literary and philosophical allusions, and masterful wordplay. Porter had a particular gift for layering innuendo and double entendre into his songs, evident in enduring standards like "Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)" and "I’ve Got You Under My Skin." Unlike many of his contemporaries, Porter approached subjects of love, desire, and sexuality with witty irony and humor.
Porter's career was dramatically interrupted in 1937 when he suffered a devastating horseback riding accident that crushed both legs. He endured over thirty surgeries and was left in chronic pain for the rest of his life, but he continued composing. His triumphant return came in 1948 with Kiss Me, Kate, a witty musical adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Featuring songs like "Too Darn Hot" and "Wunderbar," the show won the first-ever Tony Award for Best Musical.
Like Irving Berlin, Porter is remembered less for specific shows and more for his individual songs, many of which have become standards in both the musical theater and jazz repertoires. Although Porter continued to write into the 1950s, his output slowed, especially after the amputation of his right leg in 1958. He died in 1964, bequeathing a body of work that remains widely performed and recorded.
Ella Fitzgerald
While most musicals written in the 1920s and 1930s have faded from the stage and are rarely revived in full productions today, many of the songs they introduced have remained in circulation and are frequently re-recorded, becoming essential pieces of the American musical repertoire. These lasting songs are known as standards. The standards written by Broadway and Tin Pan Alley composers have been recorded and reinterpreted across generations and genres, and few artists have done more to record and reinterpret them than Ella Fitzgerald. Often called the "First Lady of Song", Fitzgerald is widely regarded as a central figure in twentieth-century jazz singing and one of the most influential interpreters of the Great American Songbook.
Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1917, and raised primarily in Yonkers, New York. Her early life was marked by hardship: after her mother died in 1932, she spent time in an orphanage and experienced periods of homelessness. Her fortunes changed in 1934, when she won an amateur contest at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Her performance caught the attention of local musicians and jazz enthusiasts, and she soon joined Chick Webb's band as a featured vocalist.
In 1938, Fitzgerald's playful recording of the children's rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" soared to number one on the pop charts, making her a household name. When Chick Webb died in 1939, Fitzgerald took over his band, which was renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, becoming one of the first female bandleaders of a major swing ensemble. She left the band in 1942 to begin a successful solo career.
Fitzgerald’s most influential body of work began in 1956 with her move to Verve Records, where she launched the ambitious Songbook Series. Across more than a dozen albums, she dedicated each recording to the music of a single composer or songwriting team, helping to construe and preserve the core repertoire of the Great American Songbook. Notable entries in the series include Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book (1956), Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book (1957), Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Song Book (1958), and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book (1959).
Ella Fitzgerald’s recordings celebrated the work of American composers while helping to circulate jazz vocal performance within album-length commercial recordings. Her technical control, emotional range, and nuanced phrasing made many of her renditions definitive. For example, her 1959 recording of “I Got Rhythm” begins with a slow, reflective introduction that conveys quiet longing before shifting into an exuberant, swinging tempo. Within a single performance, Fitzgerald could move seamlessly from smoky, intimate passages to bright, playful ones.
Fitzgerald’s distinctive style lay not only in her vocal precision and natural sense of swing, but also in her interpretive depth and emotional awareness. She conveyed a wide spectrum of feelings—joy, heartbreak, wit, and wonder—often within the course of a single song. Her phrasing was fluid and inventive, and her use of scat singing, in which she improvised melodies with nonsense syllables, combined playfulness with technical skill, elevating it into a recognized form of musical expression.
Over a career spanning six decades, Fitzgerald released more than 200 albums and earned 13 Grammy Awards. She continued recording until 1991 and remained a respected performer internationally. Through her artistry, she preserved and interpreted the work of composers such as Gershwin, Berlin, Kern, and Porter, while establishing a model for how a singer could bring personal style and emotional nuance to a song. Her performances demonstrated that the singer’s personality could be as integral to the music as the melody itself, shaping later approaches to jazz and popular music.
Bing Crosby
As stated previously, many of the most popular songs in American music were standards, compositions that circulated widely through Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, Hollywood films, radio broadcasts, and the recording industry. Unlike works that were closely identified with a single artist, standards invited reinterpretation. Different singers could record the same song and bring their own phrasing, tone, timing, and emotional character to the performance. As recording technology improved and the entertainment industry expanded, audiences increasingly connected songs with the personalities who performed them. A successful interpretation could transform a familiar composition into a personalized hit and elevate the performer to national fame. Few artists demonstrated this relationship between song interpretation and stardom more effectively than Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, whose career spanned radio, film, television, and recorded music.
Born in Tacoma, Washington, and raised in Spokane, Crosby grew up playing drums and singing with local jazz groups. In the mid-1920s, he formed a vaudeville duo with his friend Al Rinker, and the pair soon joined the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Crosby rose to national prominence in the early 1930s. In 1931, he launched a successful radio program that featured several of his early hit songs, including "Out of Nowhere,” "At Your Command," and "Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day)," which became his personal theme song. That same year, he signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, beginning a prolific film career. Crosby starred in a series of musical films, including Anything Goes (1936), The Road to Singapore (1940), and Holiday Inn (1942), in which he performed Irving Berlin's hit "White Christmas"—still the best-selling single of all time, having sold over 50 million copies worldwide.
Bing Crosby was not only a crossover media star but also a pioneering vocal stylist who reshaped the sound of American popular music. He helped popularize crooning, a new, more intimate style of singing made possible by the invention and widespread adoption of the microphone. Before the microphone, singers had to project their voices loudly to reach audiences in large theaters, regularly relying on a dramatic, operatic delivery. The microphone, an electronic device that converts sound waves into electrical signals which can then be amplified, allowed singers to be heard clearly even when singing softly. This technological development enabled a quieter, more nuanced vocal style that emphasized subtle expression over sheer volume.
This progression towards electronic technology in music production was formalized in 1925 with the introduction of electric recording, which replaced earlier acoustic recording methods that required performers to project into a large horn. Electric recording is generally regarded as higher fidelity, but it also gave recording engineers greater control over musical sound. Engineers could isolate and amplify specific elements, especially the human voice, and manipulate balance and tone to create expressive effects, including a heightened sense of intimacy between singer and listener. These technological changes fundamentally altered how vocal performances were conceived and recorded.
Crosby adapted his vocal technique to these conditions by molding his singing to resemble natural speech. He focused on phrasing, timing, and lyric interpretation, often describing his singing as an extension of spoken language. This approach produced performances that sounded relaxed, conversational, and emotionally direct, establishing a new standard for popular vocalists.
Crosby adapted his vocal technique to these new recording conditions by tailoring his vocal delivery to emulate natural speech patterns, paying close attention to phrasing and lyric interpretation. He often described his singing as an extension of speech. This gave his performances a sense of intimacy and realism that set the standard for his crooning peers, such as Dean Martin and Johnny Mathis.
His rendition of Cole Porter's “Anything Goes" is a classic example of this style. The song follows the typical 32-bar AABA form, a structure common in Broadway and jazz standards. In Crosby's recording, the final BA section is repeated for emphasis, displaying his ability to blend musical form with expressive delivery.
Throughout his career, Crosby recorded nearly 300 hit singles, more than any other artist of his time. His records are estimated to have sold over 300 million copies worldwide. He was also a major influence on future generations of vocalists, including Frank Sinatra, who credited Crosby as an inspirational figure in his own development. Crosby's ability to bridge jazz, popular music, and musical theater, along with his work in radio and film, made him one of the first true multimedia superstars.
Chapter 8: Conclusion
The development of American musical theater in the early 20th century was shaped by the contributions of composers and lyricists working across vaudeville, revues, and the emerging form of the book musical. While revues were collections of songs, dances, and skits loosely strung together, book musicals represented a significant step forward by telling a cohesive story in which songs were woven into the fabric of the plot.
Although many early book musicals did not have long lives on the stage, their songs achieved lasting success. Composers like Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Lorenz Hart created songs of such melodic and lyrical brilliance that they took on a life of their own. These songs, now referred to as standards, outlived the musicals for which they were initially written and have become cornerstones of the Great American Songbook.
Thanks to performers like Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, and many others, these songs continue to be recorded, performed, and reinterpreted across generations and genres. Whether heard in a jazz club, concert hall, Broadway revival, or on a classic film soundtrack, the music of this era remains deeply embedded in the cultural identity of American music.
Chapter 8: Further Reading
Armitage, Merle, ed. George Gershwin. New York, 1938. Repr. 1995 with a new introduction by Edward Jablonski.
Bordman, Gerald. American Musical Revue. New York, 1985.
———. American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. New York, 1978; expanded 1986; 2nd
Ed. 1992; 3rd ed. 2001.
Crawford, Richard. “George Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’ (1930).” In America’s Musical Landscape, 213–36. Berkeley, CA, 1993
Engel, Lehman. The American Musical Theater. New York, 1967; rev. 1975.
Ewen, David. The Story of Jerome Kern. New York, 1953.
Fidelman, George M. First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald for the Record. New York, 1994.
Fordin, Hugh. Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II. New York, 1977.
Freedland, Michael. Jerome Kern: A Biography. London, 1978.
Gershwin, George. “Making Music.” New York Sunday World Magazine, May 4, 1930.
———. “The Relation of Jazz to American Music.” In American Composers on American Music, edited by Henry Cowell. Palo Alto, CA, 1933.
Gershwin, Ira. “Words and Music.” New York Times, November 9, 1930.
Goldberg, Isaac. George Gershwin: A Study in American Music. New York, 1931; rev. And enlarged 2nd ed. 1958.
Knapp, Raymond. The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity. Princeton, NJ, 2005.
Krasker, Thomas, and Robert Kimball. Catalog of the American Musical: Musicals of Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Washington, DC, 1988.
Kreuger, Miles. Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical. New York, 1977.
Marx, Samuel, and Jan Clayton. Rodgers and Hart: Bewitched, Bothered and Bedeviled. New York, 1976.
Mast, Gerald. Can’t Help Singin’: The American Musical on Stage and Screen. Woodstock, NY, 1987.
McBrien, William. Cole Porter: A Biography. New York, 1998.
Mordden, Ethan. Sing for Your Supper: The Broadway Musical in the 1930s. New York, 2005.
Nolan, Frederick. The Sound of Their Music: The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein. New York, 1978; rev. 2002.
Prigozy, Ruth, and Walter Raubicheck, eds. Going My Way: Bing Crosby and American Culture. Rochester, NY, 2007.
Rodgers, Richard. Musical Stages: An Autobiography. New York, 1975; repr. with an introduction by Mary Rodgers, New York, 1995, 2000.
Smith, Cecil. Musical Comedy in America. New York, 1950; 2nd ed. 1981.
Stempel, Larry. Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater. New York, 2010.
Swain, Joseph P. The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey. New York, 1990; rev. and expanded, Lanham, MD, 2nd ed. 2002.
Winstanley, Harry. George Gershwin: His Music and His Musicals. London, 1990.
Ziegfeld, Richard, and Paulette Ziegfeld. The Ziegfeld Touch. New York, 1993.