Search Tips: 1) Click "Find on This Page" button to activate page search box. 2) When searching for a name (e.g. a songwriter), enter last name only. 3) When searching for a song title on the catalog page, omit an initial "The" or "A". 4) more search tips.
Burton Lane
Michael Feinstein Sings the
Burton Lane Songbook, Vol. 2
Overview and Commentary
Burton Lane (This section is currently in preparation)
Burton Lane was born Burton Levy in 1912 in New York City. At 15 he dropped out of school to work as a song plugger (someone who works for a music publisher promoting songs from the company's catalog by playing and/or singing them for potential customers) with the idea of becoming a songwriter. George Gershwin, no less, became his friend and mentor after their mothers met and gabbed about their sons the songwriters. Lane, unlike Gershwin, left New York after trying his hand at only one Broadway production (Earl Carroll's Vanities, 1931), and soon after set out for Hollywood to take his chance on writing songs for the movies, which had only recently introduced sound and, therefore, the prospect of musicals on the screen. There he worked with a series of lyricists including Frank Loesser, Yip Harburg, Ralph Freed and others turning out tunes for a series of mostly minor pictures.
It wasn't until 1947, when he composed the score for the hit show Finian's Rainbow that Lane was able to establish a reputation in New York, which has remained firmly in tact ever since; and having later been greatly augmented when, in 1965, he wrote the score for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
Cafe Songbook
Music-Video Cabinet:
Burton Lane (This section is currently in preparation)
Vernon Duke sings "Where Have I Seen Your Face Before" the last song he wrote with his songwriting collaborator Yip Harburg for the show An Evening Burton Lane,1981
Burton Laneresearch resources in print (listed chronologically):
ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Cattell/Bowker, Fourth edition, 1980 (dates, collaborators, shows/movies, songs, etc., entry p. 286)
Max Wilk, They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters (originally published 1973 as They're Playing Our Song: From Jerome Kern to Stephen Sondheim—The Stories behind the Words and Music of Two Generations), New York and Stratford, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008 (chapter on/interview with Lane).
David Ewen. American Songwriters, An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists). -- a wide selection of used copies is available at abebooks.com (entry pp. 253-256).
Submit comments on songs, songwriters, performers, etc.
Feel free to suggest an addition or correction.
Please read our Comments Guidelines before making a submission. (Posting of comments is subject to the guidelines.
Not all comments will be posted.)
Borrowed material (text): The sources of all quoted and paraphrased text are cited. Such content is used under the rules of fair use to further the educational objectives of CafeSongbook.com. CafeSongbook.com makes no claims to rights of any kind in this content or the sources from which it comes.
Borrowed material (images): Images of CD, DVD, book and similar product covers are used courtesy of either Amazon.com or iTunes/LinkShare with which CafeSongbook.com maintains an affiliate status. All such images are linked to the source from which they came (i.e. either iTunes/LinkShare or Amazon.com).
Any other images that appear on CafeSongbook.com pages are either in the public domain or appear through the specific permission of their owners. Such permission will be acknowledged in this space on the page where the image is used.
For further information on Cafe Songbook policies with regard to the above matters, see our "About Cafe Songbook" page (link at top and bottom of every page).
Cafe Songbook
Master List of Great American Songbook Songwriters
Names of songwriters who have written at least one song included in the Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook are listed below.
Names of songwriters with two or more song credits in the catalog (with rare exceptions) are linked to their own Cafe Songbook pages, e.g. Fields, Dorothy.
Names of songwriters with only one song credit in the catalog are linked to the Cafe Songbook page for that song, on which may be found information about the songwriter or a link to an information source for him or her.
Please note: Cafe Songbook pages for songwriters are currently in various stages of development.
(publications by and about, recordings, videos, sheet music, etc.)
, An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists). -- a wide selection of used copies is available at