Buddy DeFranco and Oscar Peterson play George Gershwin (Verve record notes)

George Gershwin

Lists of the founding fathers of jazz don't include George Gershwin, and Eurocentric writers usually identify him as the composer of Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and Porgy and Bess-- works for opera and symphony orchestras. There are, however, at least two good reasons that he should have had an entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. One is that from the early 'twenties he was an impressive improvising pianist, something of a bridge between stride and Art Tatum. Rex Stewart observed that while Gershwin was a song plugger in Tin Pan Alley, word went around among Harlem pianists that "there's a white kid downtown who plays as well as us." The evidence is available on the piano rolls Gershwin cut at the time (recently released on two compact discs by Nonesuch), on his early recordings with Fred Astaire, and on the 1924 Victor disc of Rhapsody in Blue. When Gershwin delivered the piano score of the orchestral parts of the Rhapsody to Ferdé Grofé for orchestration, the solo piano parts were blank, with instructions for Paul Whiteman to wait for George's cues for the band to resume. Much of Gershwin's contribution was then improvised at the performance. Like Duke Ellington, Gershwin found ideas for new songs from his improvisations on earlier ones. The Man I Love, for example, is derived from Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin loved to play the piano whenever there was one in the room. He once asked Oscar Levant whether his songs would still be heard in twenty years. Levant replied, "They will if you're still alive." One of the few pianists with whom Gershwin would share the piano was Art Tatum, invited to Gershwin's parties in the early 'thirties after Tatum came to New York. It's possible that Gershwin was one of Tatum's influences-- in addition to his formal training, Art learned from piano rolls and records, and odds are that he had the Whiteman-Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue.

Gershwin's compositions are another reason for jazz to claim him-- they form the basis for more jazz performances than those of any other composer (although Ellington comes close). Whatever else a musician knows, he must master the twelve bar blues and I Got Rhythm. When Ben Webster joined Ellington in 1939, he objected that he didn't know the Duke's book. "That's okay," said Ellington, "just play I Got Rhythm until you catch up." One result was the classic Webster-Ellington Cotton Tail. Other jazz takes on the Rhythm changes are Lester Young's Lester Leaps In, Dizzy Gillespie's Anthropology, the Woody Herman-Ralph Burns Apple Honey, Charlie Parker's Bird Feathers, and scores of others. Oh, Lady Be Good!, of course, became Ella Fitzgerald's signature tune.

Gershwin once said that he was writing longer works like the Concerto in F because they would have a chance at permanence, while his songs wouldn't much outlive the runs of the shows for which they were written. The familiarity of the songs in this album easily demonstrates that he was utterly wrong. In this hundredth anniversary of George Gershwin's birth, his tunes are still central to American music.

Russ Garcia

California-born in 1916, Russell Garcia played trumpet in the bands of Al Donahue and Horace Heidt before studying composition with Los Angeles based Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. One of his first assignments as an orchestrator was for an all-star West Coast big band led by Buddy DeFranco, recorded in 1953 for Norman Granz and released as Norgran 1006: The Progressive Mr. DeFranco. On that date, composing and arranging duties were shared with Nelson Riddle, but a year later he provided all the orchestrations for this Gershwin album. About that time, Garcia became the house arranger for Bethlehem Records, and his fine orchestrations were the glue in that label's 1956 showcase jazz recording of the complete score of Porgy and Bess. After Bethlehem ceased operations, Garcia's jazz work was mostly for Verve, including another Porgy and Bess, with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. He also scored films and television programs, and since the 'sixties he's lived in New Zealand, where as conductor-arranger of symphony pop concerts he's been the Arthur Fiedler of the South Pacific.

Buddy DeFranco

Born Boniface Ferdinand Leonardo DeFranco in New Jersey in 1923, Buddy DeFranco is arguably the finest clarinetist of the bop generation. After big band work with Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet, Boyd Raeburn, and Tommy Dorsey, he served in Count Basie's 1950 bop octet and began recording as a leader, for Capitol in 1949, for MGM in 51-53, and most extensively for Clef-Norgran-Verve from 1953 through 1957, where he appeared as nominal leader or sideman with most of the Verve artists of the period, including Art Tatum, Lionel Hampton, and Oscar Peterson. In 1954-55, he led a Los Angeles-based quartet with Sonny Clark on piano, and the eight brilliant lps they recorded for Norman Granz have been collected on compact disc in a Mosaic box (MD4-117). From 1966 through 1974, he led the Glenn Miller ghost band. He's mostly been writing and teaching in recent years, but he still plays beautifully at jazz festivals. A couple of his more recent Concord discs reinterpret the Benny Goodman library, with Terry Gibbs and Herb Ellis.

Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson was first recorded at age nineteen in his native Montreal by Canadian Victor, and the first tune was I Got Rhythm. In 1949, just before Norman Granz brought him to the States, there was more Gershwin on his final Canadian session. Peterson recorded extensively for Granz, as a touring member of Jazz at the Philharmonic, as session pianist with other Granz stars, and most importantly with his own trio. His early influences were the Nat Cole Trio and Art Tatum, and both can be heard in his own distinctive style. One of his first American trio albums, in 1952, was Oscar Peterson plays George Gershwin (Clef MGC 605). There were Gershwin tunes on most of his lps, and in 1976, he and Joe Pass recorded Porgy and Bess for Granz's Pablo label. A few years ago Peterson had a stroke limiting the use of his left hand-- and thus his solo work-- but his current recordings with a rhythm section, for Telarc, are unmistakably by Oscar Peterson.

DeFranco, Peterson, and Garcia play Gershwin

Jazz with strings was not new in 1954, when these sides were recorded. Artie Shaw's first band, in 1936, featured a string quartet, and in the mid-forties several bands had string sections, including those of Glenn Miller, Harry James, Stan Kenton, and Tommy Dorsey. Sy Oliver's writing for that Dorsey band (which included Buddy DeFranco on reeds) was especially impressive. Charlie Parker recorded with strings and brought them into Carnegie Hall and Birdland. And we must mention the widely popular records of Jackie Gleason in which nice jazz solos by Bobby Hackett and others were surrounded by saccharine arrangements, because these performances are superficially similar: orchestral settings of standards in which the solos often closely follow the original melodies. The similarity ends there. Garcia's writing perfectly integrates the contributions of the two soloists with the orchestra. Many of the pieces are taken at slow tempi, but the players invariably swing, and both the jazz quality and the Gershwin come through with style. Garcia's ability to combine beautifully the songs, the sections of the orchestra, and the soloists is remarkable, without a hint that these are among his first major works.

All of the songs on this disc are at least sixty years old, and the recordings are from nearly a half century ago. The only hint that they're dated, however, is that they were recorded in mono. At a hundred, George Gershwin is still here and his songs are still going strong.


Art Hilgart, January 1998

Producer, Broadway Revisited on Western Michigan Public Radio;

Contributor, The Journal of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors

Back to Broadway Revisited