Marshall Barer

Marshall Barer (1923-1998) could have been labeled eclectic, mercurial, peripatetic, or simply promiscuous, but it mattered not to him, who over the years mated his lyrics to the melodies of Michele Brourman, Hoagy Carmichael, Gordon Connell, J. Fred Coots, Vernon Duke, Duke Ellington, Michael Feinstein, Dean Fuller, Ronny Graham, Fred Hellerman, Burton Lane, Michel Legrand, Michael Leonard, Hugh Martin, Anita Nye, Lance Ong, Norman Paris, Mary Rodgers, the Davids (Raksin, Ross, Shire), William Roy, Bruce Scott, Ralph Strain, Joseph Thalken, Kurt Weill and Alec Wilder—not to mention his own. While vouchsafing no “actual-all-time-number-one-favorite” he often confessed that, when asked, he found himself “leaning toward” Ms. Rodgers, with whom he wrote Once Upon A Mattress (1959) “several times.”