Kay Swift

Katharine Faulkner Swift, known professionally as Kay Swift, was born on April 19, 1897, in New York City, and became one of the most significant American composers of the twentieth century. The daughter of Samuel Shippen Swift, an English American music critic, and Ellen Faulkner of England, she lost her father at the age of seventeen. Swift received her early education at the Veltin School for Girls before pursuing formal training as a classical musician and composer at the Institute of Musical Art, the institution now known as the Juilliard School. There she studied piano under Bertha Tapper and learned harmony and composition from Percy Goetschius, while Charles Martin Loeffler served as her composition teacher. She went on to perform professionally as a member of the Edith Rubel Trio.

Swift's personal life intersected with her musical development in formative ways. At a social event where she was performing, she was introduced through a mutual connection to James Paul Warburg, a banker from a prominent Jewish banking family. Warburg, who wrote poetry under the pen name Paul James, collaborated with Swift by setting lyrics to her melodies. The two married despite objections from Warburg's uncle by marriage, Jacob Schiff, who opposed the union on religious grounds, as Swift was Christian. They had three children together between 1919 and 1924, and their marriage ended in divorce in 1934. Swift is the grandmother of novelist Katharine Weber.

Before her introduction to George Gershwin in 1925, Swift's musical background was rooted entirely in classical training, though she was an admirer of Irving Berlin's songs. Gershwin, who coined her nickname "Kay," encouraged her growing interest in popular music. He consulted her regularly on his musicals and other compositions, and she became a trusted musical advisor to him. Their professional relationship deepened into a personal one, and the two were frequently seen together publicly. Gershwin's death in 1937 ended an affair that had lasted more than a decade. Following his death, Ira Gershwin worked with Swift to complete and arrange unpublished works by his brother, noting that she had taken down sketches as Gershwin composed and possessed total musical recall of his output. Swift continued transcribing, performing, and annotating Gershwin's music in her later years until she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1991.

Swift's Broadway career encompassed both composition and book writing. Before the 1930 production of Fine and Dandy, she and Paul James contributed numbers to The First Little Show, which included the song "Can't We Be Friends?" in 1929, and to The Garrick Gaieties. Fine and Dandy, written in 1930, established Swift as the first woman to score a complete hit Broadway musical. The title song from that production became a jazz standard. In 1934, Swift composed the ballet Alma Mater for choreographer George Balanchine, a work that represented Balanchine's first original piece set in an American context. Her Broadway credits also include the musicals Paris and Say When. In 1952, she provided the score for Paris '90, Cornelia Otis Skinner's one-woman Broadway show. That production began its road tour on January 11, 1952, with Swift performing piano in an orchestra directed by Nathaniel Shilkret alongside violinist Irving Becker and locally hired musicians. The complete soundtrack was recorded on March 4, 1952, and released by Columbia as LP 4619. Shilkret noted that Russell Bennett arranged Swift's score for eleven musicians.

Beyond Broadway, Swift served as a staff composer at Radio City Music Hall, where she wrote musical numbers for The Rockettes, and held the position of Director of Light Music for the 1939 World's Fair. At the World's Fair rodeo, an event called "The American Jubilee," she met cowboy Faye Hubbard and eloped with him two weeks later. Her 1943 book about life on his Oregon ranch, Who Could Ask for Anything More?, was adapted into the 1950 film Never a Dull Moment, starring Fred MacMurray and Irene Dunne. Swift also arranged George Gershwin's music posthumously, including the prelude "Sleepless Night" in 1946.

Swift died on January 28, 1993, at the Alzheimer's Resource Center in Southington, Connecticut, at the age of ninety-five.