Jerry Herman

Jerry Herman wrote his own lyrics as well as his music. Raised in Jersey City and educated at the University of Miami, he came up through revues and Off-Broadway work and contributed songs to the Broadway revue From A to Z in 1960, before Milk and Honey in 1961; Hello, Dolly! followed three years later, and Mame in 1966. His other musicals included Dear World and Mack & Mabel. La Cage aux Folles, in 1983, centred on a gay couple and included I Am What I Am. He won several Tony Awards, among them one for lifetime achievement, and died in 2019. The original Hello, Dolly! ran 2,844 performances and took ten Tony Awards, a haul no show matched for thirty-seven years, and Louis Armstrong's recording of the title song displaced the Beatles at the top of the American chart in 1964. Mame, written for Angela Lansbury, left behind If He Walked Into My Life, which won Eydie Gormé a Grammy, and We Need a Little Christmas. The lifetime Tony came in 2009 and the Kennedy Center honoured him the year after.