Nicknamed “the Jeweler” for his exquisite lyrics, Ira Gershwin (1896–1983), music laureate of the Jazz Age, was born on this day in New York. He understood how a single word could brighten a melody, how language could carry feeling the way light carries color.

“The song is the important thing,” he said. “Not the words or music as separate entities.” To Ira, the two met gently in the middle. Like H and O, they created something larger when joined with care.

A lifelong reader with a natural ear for rhythm and a gift for clear writing, he became best known for his luminous partnership with his younger brother, George Gershwin. Their collaborations shaped a sound that felt familiar yet full of dreams, grounded in everyday speech and lifted by imagination.

Their songs became part of the American songbook, carried across stages and screens by Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, and others who felt the grace in his lines. Many listeners consider Porgy and Bess (1935) the finest American opera, a work whose heart still beats through time.

“Ira,” said a close friend, “is defter with words than anyone I know, and he hasn’t got a bad one for anybody.” Kindness threaded his craft. The songs revealed his gentle heart.

In one beloved lyric he wrote, “‘S wonderful, ‘S marvelous, you should care for me,” shaping joy into syllables that still feel light and tender. In 1932 he became the first songwriter to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Of Thee I Sing, a tribute to the clarity and wit woven through his work.

To honor and preserve the music he helped bring forward, he created the Gershwin Archive at the Library of Congress, safeguarding autograph manuscripts and other treasures so they would endure. “Good lyrics,” he explained, “should be simple, colloquial, rhymed conversational lines.” In that simplicity, his art found its genius.