[Dixielandjazz] Gershwin and the Whiteman Band.

Mon Mar 26 13:26:02 PDT 2012

George Gershwin
Gershwin by Grofé – Original Orchestrations and Arrangements

*  "I Got Rhythm" Variations* 
*  Rhapsody in Blue*^ 
*  The Yankee Doodle Blues 
*  The Yankee Doodle Blues (new acoustic recording) 
*  That Certain Feeling 
*  Somebody Loves Me 
*  Sweet and Low-down 
*  I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise 
*  The Man I Love 
*  Fascinating Rhythm^ 
*  Summertime*^ 

*Lincoln Mayorga, piano
^Al Gallodoro, alto sax, clarinet, & bass clarinet
Harmonie Ensemble/New York/Steven Richman
Harmonia Mundi HMU907492 Total Time: 54:46 

Summary for the Busy Executive: A handsome job all around. 

Undoubtedly in a critical minority (although I'm no critic), I consider
Gershwin one of the great Modern composers – certainly one of the greatest
American composers. He's had a tough road to critical acceptance. You can
spread the condescension toward him from the serious writers thick on a
bagel. Other than a prejudice toward pop styles and pop acceptance, I have
no idea why they take the attitude. A few heavyweights (Copland, Thomson,
and Bernstein) and a whole bunch of lightweights blackball him from the True
Composing Fraternity. I can say this: no music like Gershwin's existed
before him, and no music in his style of comparable quality has appeared
after him. Among all our concert composers, he is our Verdi: the serious
musician who penetrated the popular subconscious. Copland and Bernstein have
their mega-hits, of course, but how many people hum any part of Copland's
Piano Concerto or Bernstein's A Quiet Place? Non-classical music lovers know
arias from Porgy and Bess without realizing that these are indeed arias. Any
reasonably alert American knows at least something of Rhapsody in Blue and
American in Paris. Many have even seen the movies. Of all the things
Bernstein or Copland wrote, only West Side Story, Appalachian Spring, and
Rodeo are remotely comparable in their general impact. Furthermore, after
all these years, Gershwin remains one of our major pop songwriters and a
continuing nourishment for jazz musicians. 

In this latter role, Gershwin first made contact with bandleader Paul
Whiteman, erroneously known as "The King of Jazz." Whiteman fronted a dance
band whose music, grandiloquently puffed as "symphonic jazz" and in reality
"sweet jazz" at best, was nevertheless the most popular in the country.
Whiteman had a great influence on the future of American popular music,
promoting or discovering not only Gershwin but Bix Beiderbecke, Mildred
Bailey, Frankie Trumbauer, Jack Teagarden, Billie Holiday, and,
spectacularly, Bing Crosby. Because of his success, he had the pick of
publishers' catalogues and of arrangers. At various times, he used Grofé and
Fletcher Henderson (given the race barrier in music at the time,
surreptitiously), among others. Grofé, classically trained and oriented,
wasn't likely to give him jazz-based arrangements. Most of the songs here
ticker along to a "doo-wacka-doo" beat (a lot of banjo, by the way). "The
Man I Love" chart comes from 1938. Swing had supplanted that sort of beat,
but Whiteman didn't make the switch. Much of the Grofé arrangement seems to
me proto-Mantovani – a heavy emphasis on strings, "symphonic" instruments.
The "B" ("Maybe I shall meet him Sunday") section reverts to the Twenties
sweet style. 

One curiosity: the Harmonie Ensemble records two versions of "Yankee Doodle
Blues," an early Gershwin and one of his rare songs to lean obviously on the
blues. The first version gets all the great engineering Harmonia Mundi can
muster. The second was recorded acoustically, ie, into a giant horn. Other
than for their own amusement, I have no idea why they did this, except to
make me very grateful for modern sound. At least 80% of the texture and tone
disappears behind the "historical" curtain. 

The album scores a coup by featuring then-93-year-old Al Gallodoro, a former
Whiteman reed man. Sadly, Gallodoro died before the album's release.
Nevertheless, the document is a valuable one. Gallodoro gets to duet on
Gershwin's "Summertime" with pianist Lincoln Mayorga. This isn't the best
jazz "Summertime" I've ever heard. There's very little penetration or
re-thinking of the song (Milt Jackson and Miles Davis needn't look to their
laurels), but it is a solid job of straight-ahead improvisation. 

Grofé's most famous Gershwin arrangement are, of course, the original dance
band and later symphonic arrangements of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. In the
throes of tryouts for a Broadway show, Gershwin had forgotten his commitment
to Whiteman to provide a "jazz concerto" for Whiteman's "Experiment in
Modern Music" concert. Brother Ira saw a notice in the newspaper and alerted
Brother George. With a three-week deadline, Gershwin had no time to
orchestrate. He handed off pages to Grofé as he finished them. Even so, at
the premiere, Gershwin had to improvise large parts of the score featuring
solo piano. He cued Whiteman with a nod. 

However, this specific set of circumstances led to unintended consequences.
Rhapsody in Blue remains the only one of Gershwin's concert works that the
composer did not orchestrate, but from this arose the myth that Gershwin
couldn't orchestrate. Even Gershwin's own publishers have not used the
composer's own scoring. Since Gershwin's death, most people have not heard
the genuine concert Gershwin, and the arrangements lack the interest of the
originals. Now Grofé did well. Indeed, I consider his dance-band version of
the Rhapsody the best of the non-Gershwin orchestrations. Certainly Gershwin
never felt the need to go back. Fortunately, Gershwin scholarship has come a
long way toward establishing true texts, and labels have begun to record the
real thing. This album features Gershwin's original score to the "I Got
Rhythm" Variations. Gershwin wrote it for a nationwide tour with the Leo
Reisman dance band, so it's necessarily a lot leaner than the symphony
orchestra version, by one W. C. Schoenfeld. This particular bit of
faux-Gershwin's a good standard orchestration, but the problem with any of
these rewrites has been that Gershwin's orchestrations are far more sinewy,
clear, and interesting. I have no idea what went on in the publishers' minds
to allow tamperings that we would condemn for almost every other major
composer. This isn't, after all, Mahler re-orchestrating Beethoven or Weber.
These are journeymen tinkering with genius. It says a lot for Gershwin that
his music has succeeded despite such nonsense. 

The invention in the variations both impresses and surprises. From a
vigorous piano statement of the theme, we get, among other things, a section
where, in the composer's words, "the left hand doesn't know what the right
hand is doing," a "Chinese flute" variation where the piano imitates two
out-of-tune flutes, a bluesy saunter, and a socko finish. One falls in love
easily with (and hard for) this music. It gets inside you, especially into
your feet. If you don't tap your tootsies, check your pulse. 

The performances vary. The dance-band items are wonderful. I suspect the
Whiteman band guys would have dropped their jaws at how well Richman and the
Harmonie Ensemble do. The banjo player, Scott Kuney, tears off crisp
roulades of strums in eerily perfect time. He becomes one of the driving
rhythmic forces of the band. But he's not alone. Trumpets and violins in
particular stand out in their beauty and clarity. The concert works run into
problems. Again, Harmonie plays impeccably. The recording is superb; you can
hear the inner workings of the scores unlike just about any other account.
However, the interpretations come across as a little stodgy. The classic
accounts of Leonard Bernstein's Rhapsody and the Arthur Fiedler/Earl Wild "I
Got Rhythm" (in the Schoenfeld arrangement) don't get shoved aside. They
have the joy and the fire, the willingness to go all out, that these
readings, way too careful, lack. 

All that said, this is a superior disc – beautifully recorded, well-played,
attractively produced. 

Steve Schwartz

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