singer-songwriters

Allee Willis receiving an award from Brandon Victor Dixon during the Songwriters Hall of Fame 49th Annual Induction in New York, the United States on June 14, 2018. (Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Songwriters Hall Of Fame)

Allee Willis, songwriter who co-wrote ‘Friends’ theme song, dies at 72

Willis helped produce several major hits despite not knowing how to read music or play an instrument.

The Jewish Songwriters Behind Elvis’s Jewish Hit Machine

The Jewish Songwriters Behind the Elvis Presley Hit Machine

Like Rodgers and Hammerstein before them, Leiber and Stoller were a songwriting duo to the stars. Jerome Leiber and Mike Stoller, both born in 1933 to Jewish families in Baltimore and Long Island respectively, met in Los Angeles as teenagers and bonded over a mutual love of blues and R&B. With Stoller’s compositional acumen and […]

Where Star Trek and the Great American Songbook Meet the Jews

What happened to the classic songs of the 1930’s and ‘40s? The standards of the Great American Songbook crooned by Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee or Ella Fitzgerald (and later made unforgettable by Star Trek‘s Data)? “The B-Side” by Ben Yagoda reads like a detective story sniffing out a homicide, and the deceased is Tin Pan […]

Culture

Silver Jews Ride into the Sunset

Culture

Woody Guthrie’s 1943 New Year’s Resolutions

No more posts to load.

Sections

Get JTA in your inbox

Allee Willis, songwriter who co-wrote ‘Friends’ theme song, dies at 72

The Jewish Songwriters Behind the Elvis Presley Hit Machine

Where Star Trek and the Great American Songbook Meet the Jews

Silver Jews Ride into the Sunset

Woody Guthrie’s 1943 New Year’s Resolutions

Get JTA in your inbox

Get JTA in your inbox