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Born Isidore Hochberg to immigrant parents on the Lower East Side of New York, his name was changed to Edgar Harburg. He is best known by his nickname, Yip Harburg: Yip is short for yipsel, meaning squirrel. He attended Townsend Harris High School where he and Ira Gershwin worked on the school paper and became life-long friends. They went on to attend City College (later part of the City University of New York) together. After graduation, Harburg worked as a journalist in South America, then returned to New York where he became co-owner of Consolidated Electrical Appliance Company . The company went bankrupt following the crash of 1929, and Ira Gershwin introduced Yip to Jay Gorney . He collaborated with Gorney on songs for a Broadway review (Earl Carroll's Sketchbook): the show was successful and Harburg was engaged as lyricist for a series of successful reviews, including Americana in 1932, for which he wrote the lyrics to Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? , which became an anthem of the Depression. Harburg and Gorney were offered a contract with Paramount: in Hollywood, Harburg worked with composers Harold ArlenCarl Van Vechten, 1960 Harold Arlen ( February 15, 1905 April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music. Arlen was born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. He learned the piano as a youth and formed a band as a young, Vernon DukeVernon Duke ( 1903- 1969), composer/songwriter, wrote such favorites as "I Can't Get Started" with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, "April In Paris" with lyrics by E. Yip") Harburg ( 1932), and "What Is There To Say" for The Ziegfeld Follies of 1934 also with Harb, Jerome KernJerome David Kern ( January 27, 1885 November 11, 1945) was an American popular composer. He wrote around 700 songs and more than 100 complete scores for shows and films in a career lasting from 1902 until his death. Jerome Kern was born in New York City., Jule StyneJule Styne ( December 31, 1905 September 20, 1994) was a British born United States songwriter. Styne was born in London, England as Julius Kerwin Styne. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, Illinois, where at an early age he began tak, and Burton LaneBurton Lane (born February 2, 1912 in New York City and died January 5, 1997 in New York City) was a composer and lyricist and was most known for his musicals, Finian's Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Tony Award Nominations for Burton Lane, and wrote the lyrics for The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz is a 1939 musical fantasy film based on L. Frank Baum's turn-of-the-century children's story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in which a resourceful American girl is snatched up by a Kansas tornado and deposited in a fantastic land of witches,. He was blacklistA blacklist is a list or register of people who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, or mobility. To blacklist someone (blacklist can be either a noun or a verb) can mean to deny them work in a particular field, ored for his left-wing political activity in the 1940s: no longer able to work in Hollywood, he returned to New York, where he began to write a series of book musicals with social messages, including Bloomer Girl and Finian's Rainbow.

Harburg was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 1972 __NOTOC__