henry, the ending. he always has a little great ending on the end of each of his songs. and he got hooked on w.s. gilbertllads. and then, when he went to townsend high school, they had them sitting in the seats by alphabetical order, so yip was "h" and gershwin was "g," so ira sat next to yip. one day, yip walked in with the bab ballads, and ira, who was very shy and hardly spoke with anybody, just suddenly lit up and said, "do you like those?" and they got into a conversation, and ira then said, "do you know there's music to that?" and yip said, "no." he said, "well, come on home." so they went to ira's home, which was on 2nd avenue and 5th street which is sort of upper from yip's poverty at 11th and c. and they had a victrola, which is like having, you know, huge instruments today, and played him h.m.s. pinafore. well, yip was just absolutely flabbergasted, knocked out. and that did it. i mean, for the both of them, because ira was intensely interested that thing, too. >> that began their lifelong friendship. then ira went on to be one of the pioneers, with 25 other guys, jewish russian immigrants, who