A "real lyric writer," Irving Caesar explained to Max Wilk in Wilk's They're Playing Our Song (1986), is "a fellow who can't help singing, and he sings through his words." Best known as the lyricist for "Swanee" (1919) and "Tea for Two" (1925), Caesar collaborated with composers such as George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Sigmund Romberg, and Rudolf Friml during what he referred to in a 1958 interview as "the golden age of truly inspirational songs."

Caesar was born Isidore Caesar on 4 July 1895 to Morris and Sofia Selinger Caesar. His father, a Romanian immigrant, owned a secondhand bookstore in New York's Lower East Side and taught evening English classes to recent immigrants. While Irving grew up in a literary environment, he exhibited an early talent for music. At the age of five he picked out the tune "On a Sunday Afternoon" (1902) on a local candy store's piano. Those present at his "first concert...