Enchanting Melodies

Pre-eminent in his contributions to musical theatre and the film-musical, and one of the finest of twentieth-century popular songwriters, pianist-composer and producer Richard Charles Rodgers was born at Long Island, New York on 28th June, 1902. The son of doctor of medicine William Abraham Rodgers and pianist Mamie Levy, his keyboard skills and composing flair were encouraged from an early age and as a schoolboy 'Dick' reputedly spent his pocket-money at Saturday matinees of Jerome Kern musicals. He is also said to have written his first song at the age of eleven and his earliest surviving song, 'My Auto Show Girl', when he was fourteen, yet for several years his activity was confined to writing music and occasionally lyrics for social club shows until his talent was first recognized, by Max Dreyfus of Harms music publishers, around 1917. The following year, at sixteen, he enrolled at Columbia University and there met his first major collaborator in a fellow New Yorker, the lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895-1943).