Edward Jablonski, 81; Known for Biographies of Composers

Edward Jablonski, a noted biographer of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and other composers, who also was well known for his books on aviation and aerial warfare, has died. He was 81.

Jablonski, a resident of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, died Tuesday of heart failure in a hospital in New York City.

Jablonski launched his career as an author in 1958 with “The Gershwin Years,” a pictorial biography written with Lawrence D. Stewart. A longer, revised version of the book was published in 1973 and included an authoritative discography.

“Harold Arlen: Happy With the Blues,” the first of Jablonski’s major biographies of composers, was published in 1961.

He also wrote “George Gershwin” (1962), “The Encyclopedia of American Music” (1981), “Gershwin” (1987), “Harold Arlen: Rhythm, Rainbows and Blues” (1996) and “Irving Berlin: American Troubadour” (1999).

But aviation, particularly aerial warfare, vied with music for Jablonski’s attention as a writer.

Among his more than two dozen books, 17 dealt with aviation, most notably “Flying Fortress: The Illustrated Biographies of the B-17s and the Men Who Flew Them” (1965), the four-volume “Airwar” (1971-72) and “Doolittle: A Biography,” with Lowell Jackson Thomas (1976).

“My war books have dual messages: the heroism of the men who were involved in them and the eventual nonconclusive results of war,” Jablonski told an interviewer in 1986. “Aviation makes possible the most deadly form of warfare ever -- the perversion of one of man’s greatest inventions.”

Born in Bay City, Mich., in 1922, Jablonski early on fell in love with the music of George and Ira Gershwin, which, he said, “introduced me to American music, songs, jazz, the theater -- virtually all subjects that have interested me since.”

A fan letter he wrote to Ira Gershwin as a schoolboy resulted in a long correspondence and eventually a long friendship with the lyricist.

“It was Ira Gershwin, along with my parents, who nurtured my interests in writing and music,” Jablonski said.

After serving with the Army Field Artillery in New Guinea during World War II, he graduated from Bay City Junior College, then transferred to the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1950.

In 1949, Jablonski and Peter Bartok, son of exiled Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, co-founded Walden Records, a short-lived recording company in New York City that specialized in popular American music.

Jablonski’s first freelance article, published in the literary magazine Twelfth Street, told the story of Bela Bartok’s American years -- and launched Jablonski’s 50-year writing career.

While serving as assistant to the Manhattan director of the March of Dimes from 1952 to 1959, Jablonski wrote freelance music reviews and articles for the Saturday Review, Films in Review, Theatre Arts, Stereo Review and other publications.

Before his death, he was working on “Masters of American Song,” a comprehensive history of American popular music.

Jablonski’s wife, Edith, died in 1979. He is survived by a son, David, of Chicago; two daughters, Carla of Manhattan, and Emily J. Ahlberg of Audubon, Pa.; a sister, Mary Birdsall of Versailles, Ky.; and two grandchildren.