George Gershwin: S and D

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Search: Rhapsody in Blue obv.

You can talk about Ira too, if you want.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 31 January 2003 07:58 (twenty-three years ago)

Search: "A Foggy Day in London Town"

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 31 January 2003 10:15 (twenty-three years ago)

And pretty much all of Porgy and Bess esp. "Oh Doctor Jesus."

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 31 January 2003 10:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh yes, foggy day in london town, Lyn Collins version is superb

― Robin Goad (rgoad), Friday, 31 January 2003 10:37 (twenty-three years ago)

What's the best rendition of Porgy and Bess?

― Orange, Friday, 31 January 2003 11:53 (twenty-three years ago)

"Someone to Watch Over Me" is so lovely, oh lordy... Willie Nelson's version is good.

― Andrew Thames (Andrew Thames), Friday, 31 January 2003 12:50 (twenty-three years ago)

Re. Porgy and Bess: I love the 1951 recording with Lawrence Winters and Camilla Williams. It's on CD in the "Masterworks Heritage Edition" series. Even though a lot of the opera is cut, it still conveys a sense of the story and not just the individual songs (which are sung brilliantly).

― Amateurist (amateurist), Friday, 31 January 2003 13:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Search: Lullaby - gorgeous string quartet he wrote when all of 18 for a school project. "Nice Work If You Can Get It", "Embraceable You", "Someone to Watch Over Me", "S'Wonderful", "Strike Up the Band", "But Not For Me", "They All Laughed", "He Loves and She Loves", "They Can't Take That Away from Me" so, so many other songs. Piano Concerto in F.

Not my fave: An American in Paris

― dleone (dleone), Friday, 31 January 2003 13:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I liked "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise".

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 31 January 2003 15:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Is the Miles Davis one (of Porgy and Bess) good?

― Orange, Friday, 31 January 2003 15:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Davis is excellent, as is the Ella/Louis version (neither of which is complete, however). I'm not partial to Ella's voice, but it works on this record, which would be great even if it consisted solely of Armstrong singing "A Woman is a Sometime Thing" over and over for fifty-three minutes.

TMFTML
http://intonation.blogspot.com

― TMFTML (TMFTML), Friday, 31 January 2003 15:36 (twenty-three years ago)

Summertime
Nice Work If You Can Get It
S'wonderful
Someone to Watch over Me

---I Love's You, Porgy ala Nina Simone's In Concert is nice.

― christoff (christoff), Friday, 31 January 2003 15:57 (twenty-three years ago)

search too:
Rhapsody in Blue for piano & orchestra
Variations on "I Got Rhythm" for piano and orchestra

― pina, Friday, 31 January 2003 23:09 (twenty-three years ago)

Search: "They Can't Take That Away From Me," "Nice Work If You Can Get It," "But Not For Me," "How Long Has This Been Going On," "S'Wonderful," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "A Foggy Day," "Fascinating Rhythm," tons more.

Best interpreter of Gershwin: Astaire.

― Burr, Saturday, 1 February 2003 01:15 (twenty-three years ago)

of the songs, "It Ain't Necessarily So" is (just) the first to come to mind
Gil Evans/ Miles version of Porgy And Bess is ace

...what was the Gerswin song that Jovanotti sang a coupla years ago? (wasn't that vershn on R H +Rhapsody too?)

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 1 February 2003 03:29 (twenty-three years ago)

"i got rhythm" cos it gave us rhythm changes man!

― brains (cerybut), Saturday, 1 February 2003 09:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Summertime is one of my favourite tunes. I have versions by Booker T & the MGs, Sam Cooke, the Drifters, John Fay, Al Green, Billie Holiday, MFSB, the Ohio Players, Paul Robeson, Billy Stewart, the Upsetters, Sarah Vaughan, the Walker Brothers and Errol Walker. There are, as mentioned above, loads of other wonderful Gershwin tunes too.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 1 February 2003 14:39 (twenty-three years ago)

The Walker Brothers version of "Summertime" is terrible!

For some reason I've never been able to rate Gershwin with the other great songwriters of his era; few of his songs really get to me. Part of that is his relatively small body of work, since he died so young. Anyway, I really like "'Fascinating Rhythm." It's really fun to sing, with the time changes and so on.

Search too: "Swanee," "Aren't You Kind of Glad We Did?," "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"

― Amateurist (amateurist), Saturday, 1 February 2003 15:13 (twenty-three years ago)

Best version of "Summertime" by a mile: Sidney Bechet.

― Burr, Saturday, 1 February 2003 17:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I forgot, search also The Astaire Story, 1950s recordings which include many Gershwin tunes with beautiful backing by Oscar Peterson and Charlie Shavers among others.

[Fred Astaire: the sexiest man in showbiz ever?]

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 3 February 2003 01:38 (twenty-three years ago)

It's Classic American Popular Music Composer Week on ILM. Yay!

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 3 February 2003 01:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, we're not even getting started! Harold Arlen vs. Jimmy McHugh FITE?!

― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, 3 February 2003 01:47 (twenty-three years ago)

I'll put a fiver on Arlen

― gaz (gaz), Monday, 3 February 2003 01:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Andrew that version is in "Jennifer 8" which is mainly about Uma Thurman's titties but along w/Malkovich as an internal affairs interrogator that song almost redeems the whole movie

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 3 February 2003 01:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Martin S -- The Lonnie Johnson version of Summertime is nice, too.

― christoff (christoff), Monday, 3 February 2003 15:53 (twenty-three years ago)

three months pass...

Best song of Gershwin is of course Summertime, but as I have more than 2400 covers in my possession, it's very hard to say which is the best one. Just recently for instance, I got a cd by Claude Pauly, titled Jazzperiments on which is a verryyyyyyyy interesting cover and also for instance I just downloaded a real bluegrass-version by Robin and Linda Williams (a.k.a. Marvis and Mavin Smiley). How do you compare those?

― Hans K. van der Sluijs, Wednesday, 28 May 2003 13:33 (twenty-three years ago)

four months pass...

I'd like to get a collection (or two or. . .) of recordings of Gershwin songs, one that includes "It Ain't Necessarily So." Any suggestions? (Ella Fitzgerald's Gershwin collection does not include this song.) I'm looking for relatively straightforward renderings, not, say indie bands covering Gershwin, or Scandinavian choirs doing Gershwin in collaboration with electronic free improv. (Maybe later though.)

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Thursday, 2 October 2003 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

(Goofus starts a new thread without checking the archive. Galant revives an old thread and adds to it.)

― Al Andalous (Al Andalous), Thursday, 2 October 2003 00:40 (twenty-two years ago)

There's an old compilation called "Capitol Sings Gershwin" with a bunch of old artists like Vic Damone and Keely Smith doing Gershwin songs, and "It Ain't Necessarily So" is on there. It's a decent version, though the highlight of the CD Jeri Southern's awesome version of "Nice Work If You Can Get It".

― dleone (dleone), Thursday, 2 October 2003 11:47 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Porgy and Bess - Musical, Opera or Operetta? Classic or Dud?

I just realized I saw it during the season it debuted at the MET.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 23:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Search: the songs in Shall We Dance?I The movie itself is pretty good, but not quite as good as the Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern scored Astaire/Rogers vehicles.

― Ken L (Ken L), Tuesday, 15 March 2005 23:45 (twenty-one years ago)

six years pass...

Revive?

Am listening to the opera of Porgy & Bess - I've had Louis & Ella's versions for some time - and fuck me if Summertime is so much more beautiful now sung 'as intended'. How do the operaheads here rate it? I don't know much about opera in and of itself....

― I'm not going leftfield on you... (hypehat), Thursday, 6 October 2011 08:44 (fourteen years ago)

three months pass...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/nocera-in-porgy-and-bess-variations-on-an-explosive-theme.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&hp

Great article

Got to hear thi Houston Grand Opera version

Friend just gave me a bootleg DVD of the 50's Hollywood version with Dorothy Dandrige / Sidney Poitier, as she handed it to me she said 'this one's -never- coming out again, it is just lost'. Her other comment was, 'sometimes you have to turn the sound off, and just look, and other times you have to close your eyes and just listen.' Hopefully I'll get the timing down - steeling myself.

― Milton Parker, Sunday, 22 January 2012 20:30 (fourteen years ago)

seven years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVC6nvXTt6s

― If I were a POLL I’d be Zinging (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 23 June 2019 13:21 (seven years ago)

Oh yeah, and Porgy and Bess in the new Met season.

― If I were a POLL I’d be Zinging (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 23 June 2019 13:30 (seven years ago)

Hearing lots of versions of “Summertime” today.

― If I were a POLL I’d be Zinging (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 23 June 2019 14:23 (seven years ago)

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