Vernon Duke was a Russian-born American composer and songwriter, born Vladimir Dukelsky in 1903, who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s and worked in both classical composition and popular songwriting for Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. He combined European classical training with American popular idioms, writing concert works alongside popular songs that entered Broadway and jazz repertoires, and he periodically returned to composing for the concert hall later in his career.
