Herbert Desmond Carter was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 lyricist who worked with George and Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin

Ira Gershwin was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs of the 20th century....

, Ivor Novello

Ivor Novello

David Ivor Davies , better known as Ivor Novello, was a Welsh composer, singer and actor who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. Born into a musical family, his first successes were as a songwriter...

, and others, and also wrote one of the first English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 versions of the notorious "suicide song", "Gloomy Sunday

Gloomy Sunday

"Gloomy Sunday" is a song composed by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress and published in 1933, as "Vége a világnak" . Lyrics were written by László Jávor, and in his version the song was retitled "Szomorú vasárnap"...

".

He was born in Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

. In 1924 he wrote most of the lyrics for the London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 Primrose

Primrose (musical)

Primrose is a musical in three acts with a book by Guy Bolton and George Grossmith Jr., lyrics by Desmond Carter and Ira Gershwin, and music by George Gershwin. It centers on a writer whose story-within-a-story forms the basis of the plot. It was written expressly for the London stage, where it...

, for which Gershwin wrote the music, his first commission outside the US. The musical was revived in 2003, when one reviewer wrote:

"...by far the most outstanding contribution to Primrose is the comedy lyrics of Desmond Carter, who penned the words to seventeen of the score's twenty-two songs and collaborated with Ira Gershwin on four of the remaining five. Two among them, "Isn't It Horrible What They Did to Mary, Queen of Scots" and "That New Fangled Mother of Mine," shine with humor and wordplay worthy of Noel Coward."

In 1936, Carter wrote English lyrics for the song "Gloomy Sunday" ("Szomorú vasárnap"), which had been written by Hungarian

Hungarian

Hungarian may refer to:* Hungary, a country in Central Europe* Kingdom of Hungary, state of Hungary, existing from 1000 to 1946* Hungarian people, the ethnic group primarily associated with Hungary...

 composer Rezső Seress

Rezso Seress

Rezső Seress was a Hungarian pianist and composer. Some sources give his birth name as Rudolf Spitzer.Rezső Seress lived most of his life in poverty in Budapest, when, being Jewish, was taken to a labour camp by the Nazis during the Second World War...

 with lyrics by László Jávor

László Jávor

László Jávor was a Hungarian poet who wrote the poem that was the basis for the jazz standard Gloomy Sunday, composed by Rezső Seress, later also notably recorded by Billie Holliday....

. Carter's lyrics were performed and recorded by Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...

, whose recording was successful although most later versions of the song used alternative lyrics by American writer Sam M. Lewis

Sam M. Lewis

Sam M. Lewis was a Jewish-American singer and lyricist, born in New York City, New York as Samuel Levine-Biography:...

.

Carter also collaborated with leading English popular composers of the period, including Ivor Novello and Noel Gay

Noel Gay

Noel Gay was born Reginald Moxon Armitage. He also used the name Stanley Hill professionally. He was a successful British composer of popular music of the 1930s and 1940s whose output comprised 45 songs as well as the music for 28 films and 26 London shows...

. He died in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 at the age of 43.

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