It begins simply enough, but halfway through it’s almost as if the other musical side of the man couldn’t be silent and the rest… was finished by Dukelsky.” That’s at least the essence of what fellow songwriter and Frank Sinatra collaborator Alec Wilder surmises in American Popular Song, the Great Innovators 1900-1950, where he writes, “The verse may be the most ambitious I’ve ever seen. Though subdued, one senses this to be a rather Whitmanian pronouncement of Duke’s contained multitudes, a quest for catharsis from a man who’d suppressed a valued part of his musical identity in order to make a living. Soprano Dawn Upshaw, an opera star with multiple Grammys to her name, is one of the few who’s proven willing and able to pull off a successful commercial release of the unabridged version.Įven setting the verse aside, much of “Autumn” seems like a tune Duke wrote more for himself than any audience. Most vocal covers of “Autumn” have shied away from the verse, opting to stick principally with the chorus. To start, Duke’s original iteration consisted of an unconventional first verse that’s consistently proven unwieldy for vocalists. As he writes in his autobiography, Passport to Paris, it didn’t contain what his publisher saw as “popular appeal.” He put music to it, but he never expected the tune to go anywhere. The song wasn’t even a song at first it was conceived as a poem, seemingly written on a lark and borne out of homesickness for Manhattan, while Duke was summering in Westport, Conn. “April in Paris,” “I Can’t Get Started,” and “Taking a Chance on Love,” are but a few.īut the fact that he continued to write poetry and classical music-for orchestra, chamber ensembles, etc.-as Vladimir Dukelsky (until legally adopting his pen name in 1955) turns out to be of particular consequence in telling the story of one of Vernon Duke’s most enduring standards: “Autumn in New York.” It’s as Duke that he’d partner with the best lyricists of the day-Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Howard Dietz, Ogden Nash, Sammy Cahn, Johnny Mercer-to write songs that have achieved immortality as standards. And so, from Vladimir Dukelsky we get Vernon Duke.Ĭompared to his pal Gershwin who was able to cross over and make iconic contributions to the classical canon, Dukelsky’s contributions to his native form pale. Gershwin had more practical advice, for he, too, was the son of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants trying to make a living writing music in 1920s America: Change your name to something American-sounding and write popular music. Gershwin’s young charge, still a little green yet, harbored dreams of becoming a classical composer after all, he’d studied under the great Reinhold Glière in Kiev.

Dukelsky, five years Gershwin’s junior, had been classically trained at the Kiev Conservatory, where the classical pianist and composer Vladimir Horowitz was a classmate. in 1921, a new friend and would-be mentor convinced Dukelsky to change his surname to Duke. Perhaps that’s why, shortly after he arrived in the U.S. The 1954 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians claims, in its entry for Dukelsky, that his grandmother was a descendent of Georgian royals (if you’re thinking peaches and Hank Aaron, you’ve got the wrong Georgia). But you’d earn extra credit for knowing that before George Gershwin was George Gershwin, he was born in a Brooklyn tenement to Lithuanian and Ukrainian Jews and named for his paternal grandfather-you guessed it-Jacob Gershowitz. Here’s a clue: ever heard “I Got Rhythm”? That’s George Gershwin, you say? Well, you’d be correct. No, he’s not your periodontist at least that’s not the Jacob Gershowitz I’m referring to.

Let’s play a little game: How much do you really know about your favorite Tin Pan Alley composers?įirst, a relatively easy one: Jacob Gershowitz.

Sinatra autumn in new york