TRANSCRIPT:
I’m Mark Rapp, and this is Rapp on Jazz.
DuBose Heyward’s most significant artistic legacy came from the world he created in his novel Porgy. Written in 1925, the book inspired a Broadway play, adapted by Heyward and his wife, Dorothy, and later became the foundation for George Gershwin’s legendary opera Porgy and Bess.
For the opera, Heyward wrote the libretto and several of the lyrics, collaborating with Ira Gershwin on some songs and crafting others entirely on his own.
Among his most enduring contributions are “My Man’s Gone Now,” “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing,” and “Summertime”—a song recorded more than a thousand times by artists across generations, including Billie Holiday.
Heyward is buried in Saint Philip’s Episcopal Church Cemetery in Charleston.
This has been Rapp On Jazz, a co-production of ColaJazz and SC Public Radio, made possible by Layman Publishing Partners, celebrating 50 years of expert content creation, authoritative information management, and standards-driven print and digital production.