Podcasts about gershwins

Emmy, Tony, and SAG Award nominee Norm Lewis joins The Art of Kindness with Robert Peterpaul to discuss leading a cast with kindness, the unique way advertising influenced his career, his new show Ceremonies in Dark Old Men and more. NORM LEWIS was recently seen onstage starring in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning production of A Soldier's Play and in Andrew Lloyd Webber's West End Concert of Love Never Dies. He starred in Spike Lee's critically acclaimed, "Da 5 Bloods," and in the groundbreaking FX series, Pose. Additionally, Mr. Lewis can be seen starring opposite Hilary Swank in the feature "The Good Mother," Amazon Prime's newest series, Swarm, and Hulu's, Up Here. He was also seen as 'Caiaphas' in the award-winning NBC television special, “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert!,” alongside John Legend, Sara Bareilles, and Alice Cooper. Mr. Lewis returned to Broadway in the Fall of 2021, starring in Chicken and Biscuits at the Circle In The Square Theatre. He previously appeared in the Broadway revival of Once on This Island and as Sweeney Todd in the Off-Broadway production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Barrow Street Theatre, receiving the AUDELCO Award for his performance. In May of 2014, he made history as The Phantom of the Opera's first African American Phantom on Broadway. He has been seen on PBS in the Live From Lincoln Center productions of Showboat with Vanessa Williams, Norm Lewis: Who Am I?, New Year's Eve: A Gershwin Celebration with Diane Reeves, as well as American Voices with Renée Fleming and the PBS Specials First You Dream – The Music of Kander & Ebb and Ella Wishes You A Swingin' Christmas. He can be seen recurring in the VH1 series, Daytime Divas, also alongside Vanessa Williams. His additional television credits include Women of The Movement, Law & Order, Dr. Death, Mrs. America, Better Things, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Bull, Chicago Med, Gotham, The Blacklist, and Blue Bloods, as well as in his recurring role as Senator Edison Davis on the hit drama Scandal. Mr. Lewis is a proud, founding member of Black Theatre United, an organization which stands together to help protect Black people, Black talent and Black lives of all shapes and orientations in theatre and communities across the country. He received Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle award nominations for his performance as Porgy in the Broadway production of The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. Other Broadway credits include Sondheim on Sondheim, The Little Mermaid, Les Misérables, Chicago, Amour, The Wild Party, Side Show, Miss Saigon, and The Who's Tommy. In London's West End he has appeared as Javert in Les Misérables and Les Misérables: The 25th Anniversary Concert, which aired on PBS. Off-Broadway Mr. Lewis has performed in Dessa Rose (Drama Desk nomination, AUDELCO Award), Shakespeare in the Park's The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Drama League nomination), Captains Courageous, and A New Brain. His regional credits include Porgy in The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (A.R.T.), Ragtime, Dreamgirls (with Jennifer Holliday), First You Dream, Sweeney Todd, and The Fantasticks. His additional film credits include Christmas In Tune (starring opposite Reba McEntire), Magnum Opus, Winter's Tale, Sex and the City 2, Confidences, and Preaching to the Choir. Norm's albums "The Norm Lewis Christmas Album" & "This is The Life" can be found on Amazon.com as well as cdbaby.com. Ceremonies in Dark Old Men Tickets: https://www.thepeccadillo.com/ Follow Norm: @thenormlewis Follow us: @artofkindnesspod / @robpeterpaul youtube.com/@artofkindnesspodcast Support the show! (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theaok) Got kindness tips or stories? Want to just say hi? Please email us: artofkindnesspodcast@gmail.com Music: "Awake" by Ricky Alvarez & "Sunshine" by Lemon Music Studio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the first moment I heard this ditty, it became my theme song. I learned to play it - (in a far cruder fashion than Ry, of course) and worked it into my set list. Just like the character Bill in the narrative, - (my name, btw) - my reprobate ways had also been domesticated by love. And, another harmonic convergence: I had even spent a year in Louisville, Kentucky. Jack Yellen, the Jewish-Polish immigrant who wrote these Jazz-age lyrics, also penned Happy Days are Here Again, and Ain't She Sweet. If he had only created these three songs, his oeuvre would have been impressive. His art was another example, like that of Irving Berlin and the Gershwins, of the affinity young Jewish musicians expressed for black culture.  And, like the Semitic moguls of old Hollywood - they became reflectors of America's aspirational self-image.Ry Cooder's Jazz album was not exactly an anomaly - he has always been a musical archeologist, but on this collection he strove for unparalleled authenticity. Check out his jaw dropping rendition of Bix Beiderbecke's In A Mist. Sublime. He's a national treasure, and if the jaunty swing-time on this number doesn't get your feet tapping - check your pulse - you might be dead.

PARENTS: you can now subscribe to us on YouTube, where our live action puppet show featuring Froggy the Gator is now posted! Just click ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Froggy and his friends face off against a WHOLE TEAM of Gershwins in Gator Grove's biggest hockey match of the year! Will they emerge victorious? And will they learn a valuable lesson about teamwork? Listen to find out!

Es war ein epochales Konzert am 12. Februar 1924 in New York: George Gershwin brachte am Klavier seine „Rhapsody in Blue“ zur Uraufführung. Noch hundert Jahre später ist die „Rhapsody“ ein Welthit. Rainer Peters blickt auf Gershwins „volles Leben“ zurück und räumt in seiner Biografie mit einigen Mythen auf.

Michael and David speak of many things ... part of the reason they always seem to have so much fun. Among other things Michael speaks of how he manages to invite "the muses" and keeps his art both open and discreet at the same time.  He also speaks of his work as musical composer for the brand new Disney series, Star Wars: The Acolyte.  I always have speaking with Michael: our times always feel rich and multi-dimensional.2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning and Emmy- and Grammy-nominated composer Michael Abels is best known for his genre-defying scores for the Jordan Peele films GET OUT, US and NOPE.  The score for US won a World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, multiple critics awards, and was named “Score of the Decade” by The Wrap.  Both US and NOPE were shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Original Score.  In 2022, Abels' music was honored by the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Middleburg Film Festival, and the Museum of the Moving Image.  NOPE was awarded Best Score for a Studio Film by the Society of Composers & Lyricists.  Other recent projects include the films BAD EDUCATION, NIGHTBOOKS, and the docu-series ALLEN v. FARROW.  Current releases include CHEVALIER (Toronto Intl Film Festival) and LANDSCAPE WITH INVISIBLE HAND (Sundance 2022), his second collaboration with director Cory Finley.  Upcoming projects include THE BURIAL (Amazon), and a series for Disney Plus.Abels' creative output also includes many concert works, including the choral song cycle AT WAR WITH OURSELVES for the Kronos Quartet, the Grammy-nominated ISOLATION VARIATION for Hilary Hahn, and OMAR, an opera co-composed with Grammy-winning recording artist Rhiannon Giddens.  The New York Times named OMAR one of the 10 Best Classical Performances of 2022 and said, “What Giddens and Abels created is an ideal of American sound, an inheritor of the Gershwins' “Porgy and Bess” but more honest to its subject matter, conjuring folk music, spirituals, Islamic prayer and more, woven together with a compelling true story that transcends documentary.”Abels other concert works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and many others.  Some of these pieces are available on the Cedille label, including DELIGHTS & DANCES, GLOBAL WARMING and WINGED CREATURES.  Recent commissions include EMERGE for the National Symphony and Detroit Symphony, and a guitar concerto BORDERS for Grammy-nominated artist Mak Grgic.Abels is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, gaming and streaming media.https://michaelabels.com/

Broadway Drumming 101 is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In today's episode of Broadway Drumming 101, we chat with the highly accomplished drummer and percussionist Charles Descarfino. With a portfolio of over twenty Broadway shows, Charles shares his extensive experience and unique insights into the world of Broadway music. Here are the key highlights from the episode:- Charles' experiences performing in over twenty Broadway shows, including "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "On the Town," "Elf," "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," "Follies," "Ragtime," "Young Frankenstein," "Les Misérables," "The Threepenny Opera," "Sweet Charity," "Thoroughly Modern Millie," "Seussical," "Titanic," "The Who's Tommy," and "City of Angels." and many more.- Charles discusses his early influences, including his father, a saxophonist who played in nightclubs and introduced him to music. He shares how his father's passion for jazz and his late-night jam sessions at home sparked his interest in music and laid the foundation for his career in percussion.- Charles bravely shares his first Broadway experience with "Sweet Charity," a journey that was not without its challenges. He credits Joe Passaro and John Miller for their pivotal role in launching his career, and shares stories about the opportunities and obstacles he encountered as he transitioned into the Broadway scene.- He discusses his time at William Paterson University and how it was a transformative period. There, he studied under notable instructors and expanded his musical knowledge. He underscores the importance of formal training and continuous learning, which has been instrumental in maintaining and honing his musical skills.- Charles shares his experiences conducting shows like "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and working with various conductors and musicians.- Charles emphasizes the importance of perseverance, respect, and readiness for those looking to break into the Broadway scene. He provides practical advice, such as the need to constantly practice and improve, the importance of networking and building relationships in the industry, and the necessity of being prepared for auditions and performances.- Charles talks about his international travels, including memorable trips to Italy, France, and Hawaii. He reflects on the cultural enrichment of traveling and experiencing diverse musical traditions, sharing how his visit to Italy inspired him to incorporate classical elements into his Broadway performances, and his time in Hawaii introduced him to the beauty of Polynesian rhythms.- Charles discusses the evolving Broadway scene, the impact of technology and social media, and contemporary musicians' challenges. He also shares his thoughts on the future of Broadway and the importance of adaptability in a rapidly changing industry, highlighting how social media has revolutionized the way musicians promote their work and how technology has enhanced the audience's theater experience.- He reflects on the importance of maintaining a positive attitude, building solid relationships, and continuously striving for excellence.Tune in for Charles Descarfino's remarkable journey, insights, and valuable advice for aspiring musicians. This episode offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration for anyone interested in working on Broadway.Clayton Craddock is the founder of Broadway Drumming 101, a comprehensive online platform dedicated to providing specialized mentorship and a meticulously curated collection of resources.Clayton's Broadway and Off-Broadway credits include: tick, tick...BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill, and Ain't Too Proud - The Life And Times Of The Temptations, Cats: The Jellicle Ball and The Hippest Trip: The Soul Train Musical. He has subbed for shows like Motown, Evita, Cats, Avenue Q, The Color Purple, Rent, Spongebob Squarepants - The Musical, Hadestown (tour), and many more. Clayton has appeared on The View, Good Morning America, Jimmy Fallon, The Today Show, the TONY Awards, and performed with legends like The Stylistics, The Delfonics, Mario Cantone, Laura Benanti, Kristin Chenoweth, Kerry Butler, Christian Boyle, Norm Lewis, Denise Williams, Chuck Berry, and Ben E. King.Clayton is a proud endorser of Ahead Drum Cases, Paiste Cymbals, Innovative Percussion drumsticks, and Empire Ears.For more about Clayton Craddock, click here: www.claytoncraddock.com Get full access to Broadway Drumming 101 at broadwaydrumming101.substack.com/subscribe

Nach dem Welterfolg mit seiner "Rhapsody in Blue" will George Gershwin es und schiebt 1925 gleich ein komplettes Klavierkonzert hinterher - wieder unter dem Motto "Klassik meets Jazz". Dem Time Magazine ist der aufstrebende Komponist eine Titelstory wert... Von Michael Arntz.

För 100 år sedan den 12 februari 1924 är det konsert på Aeolian Hall på 43:e gatan i New York. Ett nytt kapitel i musikhistorien, säger en besökare om Rhapsody in Blue. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. På konserten är det knökfullt och på plats finns musikaliska mästare som Rachmaninoff, Kreisler, Stokowski, Heifetz - vissa tycker sig se Stravinskij i publiken.Konserten heter An experiment in Modern Music. Det är en lång och omfattande konsert - och efter 33 nummer, när alla är som tröttast, med en ventilation som är trasig och musik som låtit rätt enahanda, sätter sig den 26-årige sångskrivaren och musikalkompositören George Gershwin vid pianot. Han ska spela det näst sista stycket på programmet. Bandledaren Paul Whiteman höjer taktpinnen - Palais Royale Orchestra är beredda. Rhapsody in Blue hörs för första gången.Den här dagen, för runt ett sekel sedan, klev jazzen definitivt in på den klassiska musikens område. Eller om det var tvärtom...För oss, nu, känns jazzharmonier i klassisk musik naturliga. Men då var det annorlunda vilket man faktiskt kan höra när Rhapsody in Blue drygt tio år senare arrangerades om för en symfoniorkester. Om vi lyssnar på en av de inspelningar som genom åren varit den mest spelade, där Erich Kunzel leder Cincinnatis symfoniorkester, hör vi att allt blivit rakare, stramare och inte så många glidningar i tempo och frasering.Men då Gershwin och Whiteman själv framför Rhapsody in Blue hör vi redan under den här första minuten hur det drygt två-oktavsstora glissandot, tar ut svängarna mer, hur klarinetten nästan skrattar åt sig själv och sitt läte, hur rytmen helt enkelt har flera och kraftiga jazziga betoningar. Accenterna är tydligare.Rhapsody in Blue blev en succé direkt. Under de tre första åren mellan 1924 och 1927 hade Whitemans band spelat den 84 gånger och sålt en miljon plattor.Gershwin själv talade mycket om just Amerikas själ, men många gånger nämner man Rhapsody in Blue som ett porträtt av New York.Konsertrubriken då, den 12 februari 1924, var "Ett experiment inom modern musik". Nu är experimentet en klassiker.Musiken i inslaget är främst från de två inspelningarna gjorda 1924 och 1927 plus den med Erich Kunzel och Cincinnatis symfoniorkester.

It's Groundhog Day! Back in Episode 45 Connor introduced us to George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and described it as his "going mad montage" where he tried to catch a pesky gopher. So we decided today should be Gopher Day instead! We're celebrating by revisiting George and Ira Gershwin and some of the iconic music that made their careers the stuff of legends. From the banks of the Swanee to Porgy & Bess and every concerto, suite, and show tune in between, these brothers were international pioneers of America's musical pantheon. We cover their lives end to end (and then some) with 13 of their greatest works, learn about their secondary careers, experience gastric dysfunction, and discuss the differences between groundhogs and gophers. Time to reap what we've sown... It's a new kind of holiday special you'll go-pher time and time again!Experience the Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythms with our playlist of songs for the episode! Find it here:Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/198JuLihZAwc1APEbaomCb?si=d9528a5d479540bbYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImgqGv0TXCs&list=PLYumnChiw_I8KxxAVa_6x_O85uevdejG4Keep Spinning at www.SpinItPod.com!Thanks for listening!0:00 Intro 6:02 Awards & Accolades 8:09 About The Gershwins 12:53 Fact Or Spin 14:10 Groundhog Or Gopher? 17:59 George & Ira Are Not Their Real Names 19:33 They're Also Painters 22:35 George Credits His Success To An Illness 26:50 He Had A Custom Composing Desk Built 31:13 Swanee 35:31 Blue Monday 39:33 Rhapsody In Blue 43:43 Concerto In F 47:56 Strike Up The Band 51:59 'S Wonderful 54:07 An American In Paris 57:43 Cuban Overture 1:00:32 Who Cares 1:05:48 Summertime1:10:53 I Loves You, Porgy 1:13:34 Let's Call The Whole Thing Off 1:17:37 Love Is Here To Stay 1:21:07 Final Spin Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a special encore episode of Broadway Nation. In light of the recent revisal of Rodgers & Hart's musical comedy Pal Joey at New York's City Center I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of my favorite episodes. I'll be back next week with the third part of my conversation with Oliver Soden regarding his amazing new biography of Noel Coward. In the meantime please enjoy Pal Joey and the Silver Age of Broadway, part 2: During the 1930s Broadway was severely impacted by the economic disaster of the "Great Depression". However, somehow out of all that hardship and struggle came an extraordinary period of artistic achievement and spectacular continuing development for the Broadway Musical. The inventors of these shows included several new and defining masters of the musical, as well as many of the bright lights of the 1920's, who now achieved their full wattage in the 1930's. Among these were Dietz & Schwartz., Lindsay & Crouse, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, The Gershwins, and George "Mr" Abbott. Become a PATRON of Broadway Nation! This episode is made possible in part through the generous support of our Patron Club members! If you would like to help support the work of Broadway Nation I will information at the end of the podcast about how you too can become a Patron. If you are a fan ofBroadway Nation, I invite you too to become a PATRON! For a just $7.00 a month you will receive exclusive access to never-before-heard, unedited versions of many of the discussions that I have with my guests — in fact I often record nearly twice as much conversation as ends up in the edited versions. You will also have access to additional in-depth conversations with my frequent co-host Albert Evans that have not been featured on the podcast.  All patrons receive special “on-air” shout-outs and acknowledgement of your vital support of this podcast. And if you are very enthusiastic about Broadway Nation there are additional PATRON levels that come with even more benefits. If you would like to support the work of Broadway Nation and receive these exclusive member benefits, please just click on this link: https://broadwaynationpodcast.supercast.tech/ Thank you in advance for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 Thos talks to the talented writer and performer, Lucy Stevents, about her latest show – Gertrude Lawrence: A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening - which uses primary sources and songs to tell the story of one of the twentieth century's most successful musical theatre stars. Find out why Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Kurt Weill, Noel Coward and Rogers and Hammerstein were queuing to write musicals for her, and why Julie Andrews played her in the aptly name musical film, Star!

This is the first of a three-part program paying tribute to the extraordinary Ethel Merman, known for starring in Broadway shows like CALL ME MADAM, ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, and GYPSY. This episode includes archival material with Merman discussing her collaborations with musical theatre icons like The Gershwins, Cole Porter, and William Gaxton. It highlights music from such shows as GIRL CRAZY, TAKE A CHANCE, ANYTHING GOES, and RED HOT AND BLUE.  Featured songs: “Medley of songs performed by Ethel Merman,” “I GOT RHYTHM,” “LIFE IS JUST A BOWL OF CHERRIES,” “EADIE WAS A LADY,” “YOU'RE THE TOP,” “BLOW, GABRIEL, BLOW,” “RED HOT AND BLUE,” and “DOWN IN THE DEPTHS.”  Originally produced and broadcast in 1984. For more information go to AnythingGoesPL.com or BPN.FM/Anything Goes. Theme music arranged by Bruce Coughlin. Associate producer Jeff Lunden. Anything Goes – Backstage with Broadway's Best – is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nikki Renée Daniels has been in ten Broadway Shows including COMPANY, THE BOOK OF MORMON, THE GERSHWINS' PORGY AND BESS, ANYTHING GOES & LES MISERABLES. She starred in the role of Angelica Scuyler in the Chicago company of HAMILTON. In this episode, Nikki discusses her experience as the first black actor to play the role of "Bobbie" in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's COMPANY. She shares how she decided to pursue musical theater over opera as a Soprano and the joys and challenges she finds in raising her daughters in New York City. VOTE FOR STAGES IN PEOPLES CHOICE AWARDS Nikki Renee Daniels Neuro Gum Stages Listeners Strip Make for Stages ListenersSupport the show: http://www.stagespodcast.netSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with NaTasha Yvette Williams, Tony Award Nominated Broadway Star, "Sweet Sue" from “Some Like It Hot” About Harvey's guest: Today's special guest, NaTasha Yvette Williams, is currently taking Broadway by storm in her spectacular Tony Award-nominated portrayal of “Sweet Sue”, who most definitely puts the HEAT in the smash hit musical, “Some Like it Hot”.   In addition to her Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, she received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Musical.   Our guest is a Broadway veteran, having appeared in 7 other Broadway shows including “The Color Purple”, “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess”, which earned her and her fellow cast members a Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theatre Album,  “A Night With Janis Joplin”, “Waitress”, “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”, “Chicago”, and “Chicken & Biscuits”.    She's also appeared in the national tours of “Xanadu”, “The Drowsy Chaperone”, the Elvis musical “All Shook Up”, “Seussical the Musical”, and “Cinderella”.  And she's starred in Regional productions of many shows including “Hairspray”, “Ain't Misbehavin'”, and “Mahalia: A Gospel Musical”.   She won an Audelco Award for Outstanding Performance in a Musical for playing “Grandma” and “Spirit of the Booty” in “Bella: An American Tall Tale”.   On the big screen, she appeared in “Sweet Little Lies”, “Alice”, and “Better Nate than Ever”.  And on TV, you've seen her in “Orange is the New Black”, “Madam Secretary”, “New Amsterdam”, “FBI”, “The Good Fight”, “Harlem”, “Partner Track”, “Run the World”  - and of course, who can ever forget her magnificent 2015 television performances as “Queenie” in “Live from Lincoln Center” and “Glinda” in “The Wiz: Live!”.   In addition to her Broadway cast albums, she's released 2 solo albums of beautiful standards, “How Deep is the Ocean”, and “For My Mother”.   And she's appeared in concert with the New York Philharmonic and numerous symphony orchestras across America.    After seeing “Some Like it Hot” during my recent trip to New York, I became OBSESSED with getting this FABULOUS woman to appear on our show.  And today, despite her grueling performance schedule, she has graciously agreed to grant me this interview. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ To see more about Joel Thurm, go to:https://www.instagram.com/natashayvettewilliams/https://open.spotify.com/artist/53sTxOQ5mNoqYdxO1heLUk #NaTashaYvetteWilliams   #harveybrownstoneinterviews

At long last, our long-teased prints podcast episode is here! David & Katherine discuss Hirschfeld's long, exciting history with prints, and answer your burning print questions. Learn more about the Harlem, Rhythm, and Kabuki series, plus many more works! Follow along with the show notes to see the works mentioned in this episode! Lithograph Example: Bob Hope (1988) Etching Example: Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (1975) The Hook Shop (1926) Fez Drawings (1926) Art Students League - Caricature Study (1926) Railway Station, Kharkov (1928) Art and Industry (1931) The Dizzy Club (1931) La Serviette Au Cou (1931) Harlem as seen by Hirschfeld (1941) - Apollo Chorine Rhythm Series (1970) Kabuki Series (1976) Chelsea Pub (1931) Elvis (1968) - (Print with Spotlight) Charlie Chaplin Back View (1981) Reba in Annie Get Your Gun (2001) What's My Line? TV Guide Cover (1957) Lindy Hop from the Harlem Series (1941) The Movies (1954) Conductors of the Philadelphia Orchestra (2002) The Summit (2002) Ringo Starr (2001) Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1997) The Grateful Dead (1995) Jack Lemmon in Tribute (1979) The Sopranos (2001) Frank Ferrante as Groucho Marx (1986) Swing Quartet (1956) United Nations Postal Service (1991) Beverly Hills 90210 (1995) The Gershwins (1955) The Thin Man (1998) Jerry Garcia (1995) Visit our shop for available prints! Print sales support the activities of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation! Visit our website Visit our shop Like us on Facebook Subscribe to our Youtube Channel  - Check out Episode 2 of the Hirschfeld Moments Series! Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram

Barefoot Days have arrived, a season so sweet and easy that it has its own anthem.“Summertime,” from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, is perhaps the perfect jazz standard. Unforgettable lyrics. A melody that seems to be from a dream. Like magic, the song sounds new every single time, no matter how many times you've heard it.And you've heard it many times. “Summertime” is one of the most recorded songs of all times; in fact, Guinness World Records is aware of more than 67,000 individual recordings of “Summertime” since its composition in 1934. Just two years later, Billie Holiday was the first to hit the U.S. pop charts with it, reaching No. 12 in September 1936.Gershwin or Not GershwinBut did you know that neither the tune to "Summertime" nor its lyrics might be original with Gershwin?First, about those words. Gershwin's opera was based on a 1925 novel called Porgy by DuBose Heyward, whose wife, Dorothy, turned into a stage play in 1927. Later, DuBose collaborated with Ira Gershwin to craft the libretto for the Gershwins' folk opera Porgy and Bess, and the lyrics to "Summertime" are assumed to be by the Heywards.And the melody? Well, that's a little more complicated. Gershwin copyrighted it, saying he used no previously composed spirituals in his opera. But really?Some critics contend “Summertime” is an adaptation of the African American spiritual "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child." Adding a bit of heft to this theory is the fact that the final scene of Dorothy Hetward's stage play — which predated the Gershwin work by eight years — ended with a performance of “Motherless Child.” So, it's debatable. If you want to do your own research, YouTube offers assorted performances of “Motherless Child.” Gershwin detractors often specifically cite Paul Robeson's 1930s recording as Exhibit A.Our Take on the TuneThe Flood started playing “Summertime” a quarter of a century ago with various arrangements. Sometimes, for instance, it has been an instrumental, featuring solos over the by years by Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin, by Jacob Scarr, Paul Martin and Vanessa Coffman.The first time the song came to a Flood album — the 2002 The 1937 Flood Plays Up a Storm — Charlie Bowen handled the vocals. Eleven years later, by the time the band released its fifth album, Cleanup & Recovery, the guys had turned over the singing to Michelle Hoge.Now in our latest take on the tune, Randy Hamilton does double duty. He takes over the vocals, and his soulful bass work creates a moody setting that inspires introspective solos by Sam St. Clair and Danny Cox. Take a listen; it's “Summertime,” 2023. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Broadway Brilliance: A Candid Conversation with Tony-Nominee Natasha Yvette WilliamsIn this captivating interview, we sit down with the remarkable Natasha Yvette Williams, a rising star whose talent has been shining on Broadway for the past few years. She recently took the stage by storm in the hit musical "Some Like It Hot," wowing audiences with her show-stopping performance of "What Are You Thirsty For?" Not only did she shine during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but she also made her mark on the Original Broadway Cast Album, leaving listeners eager for more.Natasha's journey to success has been steady and impressive. From her standout roles as replacements in iconic productions like "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical," "Waitress," and "A Night with Janis Joplin," to her unforgettable performances in "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" revival and "Chicago," she has proven herself as a force to be reckoned with. Her portrayal of Mama Morton and the creation of the character Brianna in "Chicken & Biscuits" have further solidified her reputation as a versatile and talented performer.Now, in her breakout role in "Some Like it Hot," Natasha is garnering rave reviews from critics and audiences alike. The New York Times describes her as a powerhouse, delivering unforgettable jazz numbers that leave a lasting impression. Variety praises her vocals and comedic timing, while Entertainment Weekly acknowledges her ability to steal the show with her portrayal of the acerbic Sweet Sue.Natasha is a passionate advocate for working mothers and body positivity. As a mother of twins, she understands the importance of representation and inclusion in the entertainment industry. As a founding member and working with Black Theatre United, Natasha aims to mentor and uplift aspiring artists while advocating for justice and equality on and behind the stages of Broadway.Support the showCheck out our new website and shop: www.blackwomenamplified.com Visit our L.I.F.E LEARNING LAB and discover our life personal development digital download journals and masterclasses. visit: www.blackwomenamplified.com/lifePlease support our Power Partners:Buddha Tea: Rich delicious tea with soothing properties perfect for your self-care experience.www.BuddhaTeas.comVital Body is a nutrient company that I have used for over 15 years. They have an incredible product called Vital Fruits and Vegetables that contains amazing ingredients, enzymes, probiotics, and greens with no added sugar. My clients love it as well. www.vitalbody.comThey are offering our tribe 20% off when you use the code: OY2N2GLV5AThank you for supporting our power partners. They help keep the show going. I appreciate it. Monica Wisdom

Our series, "The Art of Teaching," celebrates Angela Harris, ballet instructor at Emory University and adjunct professor at Spelman. Also, director Adam Koplan details "The Gershwins: Who Could Ask for Anything More," coming to the Bremen Museum Sunday, April 23. And our series, "Speaking of Music," spotlights "god-hop" artist, Sa-Roc.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

For Video Edition, Please Click and Subscribe Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oTCCKhVfMM&t=18s Until recently, The New York Times covered cabaret on a regular basis. It was an important part of their cultural coverage. I am celebrating with some of my favorite cabaret artists! Margo Brown is joining us! Vocalist Margo Brown will celebrate the release of her romantic debut recording, Forever Me with Love, with two live shows in May at Don't Tell Mama in Manhattan. Margo Brown is the 2022 Broadway World Winner for Best Duo Show, You're Nothing Without Me, with Lisa Dellarossa, and a 2018 Broadway World Winner (Best Debut Show) for Margo Sings Mercer. Miss Brown will be accompanied by Music Director Jon Weber on piano and Steve Doyle on Bass. The show is directed by Tanya Moberly. Show dates are May 9th and 10th at 7PM at the legendary theater district cabaret, Don't Tell Mama, which is a CASH ONLY ROOM. There is a music charge of $20 per person and $20 per person minimum (must include two drinks). There is a light food menu available. Reservations should be secured in advance at the following link: tinyurl.com/tbkm53fm Forever Me with Love is a collection of love songs from the Great American Songbook, including works by The Bergmans, The Gershwins, Jerome Kern and more. There are twelve tracks expertly arranged by Phil Hinton and recorded at Phil Hinton Studios in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. The recording is available now on Amazon, iTunes and all streaming platforms as well as directly from Margo Brown at www.margobrownentertainment.com   

Für die BR-KLASSIK-Sendung "Interpretationen im Vergleich" hat Christoph Vratz sich George Gershwins "Rhapsody in Blue" vorgenommen und sich durch zahlreiche unterschiedliche Aufnahmen gehört. BR-KLASSIK-Moderatorin Antonia Goldhammer hat mit ihm über diese Mammutaufgabe gesprochen.

Meredith Lucio is a theatre artist working primarily as a commercial and non-profit producer in New York City. Her past productions include Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, in which she received a Tony Award, for Best Revival; “The Lightning Thief; the Percy Jackson Musical” presented on Broadway, and through a National Tour; Bedlam's productions of “Hamlet” and "Saint Joan” (“Saint Joan” was awarded Best Revival from the Off Broadway Alliance);“The 39 Steps” at New World Stages and Rooms: a rock romance.She is the Producing Director of “The Assembly", whose developing musical “In Corpo" is premiering summer 2023 at Theatre Row in New York City.  As a Sr. Management Associate with Aaron Grant Theatricals, she has served as general manager for the Carnegie Hall concert of Super You! the Musical and recently produced and directed the audio play Bad People by Kati Schwartz (now available on Audible and iTunes).https://www.instagram.com/backyardstobroadway/https://www.facebook.com/TheaterZen/https://www.theatrical.ag/https://www.assemblytheater.org/Now is a great time to act on your dreams! If this episode helped you, please share to a friend!https://www.instagram.com/HyphensHaven/http://www.dreamofdrea.com/Watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamofDréa

Erin, Claire, Dan, and returning guest Munsi Parker-Munroe unpack some terrible leading men as the Oscars get musical while the audience goes to Sunday School. First, Gene Kelley brings us the songs of the Gershwins, some incredible dance numbers, and a romance that set gender relations back fifty years in An American in Paris. Does the dancing defy the duncery? We discuss, then jump back to the new testament where Quo Vadis dares to ask "How much less likeable can our male leads get," and "How much can a movie be about Jesus without actually showing Jesus?" The answer to both? Surprisingly high. Join us for the ride!Find all of our episodes and the rest of Writing Therapy Productions' various entertainments at www.writingtherapyproductions.com

A new podcast from Warner Chappell Music, BANG and Audiation, Setting the Standard: Stories from the Great American Songbook, cordially invites you to listen along as we answer the question: “Who wrote these classic songs”? From Johnny Mercer to Cole Porter to the Gershwins, join us as we dive headfirst into the lives of America's musical greats and learn how their musicianship and storytelling would shape American culture for decades to come. Replete with key interviews from a bevy of cultural icons such as Billy Corgan, Michael Feinstein, and Alan Bergman, this podcast will grant you unparalleled access into the world of this formative era in American musical history.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

George Gershwin's story is like the story of so many American immigrants.  His mother and father, Moishe and Rose Gershowitz,  were Russian Jews who came to New York City in the 1890s looking for a better life and to escape persecution at home. Soon they became the Gershwines, and in 1898, Jacob Gershwine was born. Later on he changed his name to sound just a little bit more American, and the name George Gershwin was on its way to immortality.  In just a few short years, the Gershowitz's had become the Gershwins, and the story of George Gershwin was beginning to be written.  On today's show we'll talk about some of Gershwin's greatest works, including his Concerto in F, Rhapsody in Blue, and Porgy and Bess, but we'll also talk about the collision between Classical and Pop music, a Russian Jew imbibing the purely American form of Jazz, and Gershwin's place in the modern classical and jazz repertoire, and in America. Join us!

The Broadway catalogue of Judy Garland is celebrated on her centenary. Classic songs by the Gershwins, Rodgers with Hart and Hammerstein, Jule Styne, Noël Coward and more (and partnered by Sinatra, Crosby, and Liza among others).

This week's episode looks at “All You Need is Love”, the Our World TV special, and the career of the Beatles from April 1966 through August 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Rain" by the Beatles. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ NB for the first few hours this was up, there was a slight editing glitch. If you downloaded the old version and don't want to redownload the whole thing, just look in the transcript for "Other than fixing John's two flubbed" for the text of the two missing paragraphs. Errata I say "Come Together" was a B-side, but the single was actually a double A-side. Also, I say the Lennon interview by Maureen Cleave appeared in Detroit magazine. That's what my source (Steve Turner's book) says, but someone on Twitter says that rather than Detroit magazine it was the Detroit Free Press. Also at one point I say "the videos for 'Paperback Writer' and 'Penny Lane'". I meant to say "Rain" rather than "Penny Lane" there. Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them. All my Beatles episodes refer to: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For this episode, I also referred to Last Interview by David Sheff, a longform interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono from shortly before Lennon's death; Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, an authorised biography of Paul McCartney; and Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey. Particularly useful this time was Steve Turner's book Beatles '66. I also used Turner's The Beatles: The Stories Behind the Songs 1967-1970. Johnny Rogan's Starmakers and Svengalis had some information on Epstein I hadn't seen anywhere else. Some information about the "Bigger than Jesus" scandal comes from Ward, B. (2012). “The ‘C' is for Christ”: Arthur Unger, Datebook Magazine and the Beatles. Popular Music and Society, 35(4), 541-560. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2011.608978 Information on Robert Stigwood comes from Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins. And the quote at the end from Simon Napier-Bell is from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, which is more entertaining than it is accurate, but is very entertaining. Sadly the only way to get the single mix of "All You Need is Love" is on this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but the stereo mix is easily available on Magical Mystery Tour. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start the episode -- this episode deals, in part, with the deaths of three gay men -- one by murder, one by suicide, and one by an accidental overdose, all linked at least in part to societal homophobia. I will try to deal with this as tactfully as I can, but anyone who's upset by those things might want to read the transcript instead of listening to the episode. This is also a very, very, *very* long episode -- this is likely to be the longest episode I *ever* do of this podcast, so settle in. We're going to be here a while. I obviously don't know how long it's going to be while I'm still recording, but based on the word count of my script, probably in the region of three hours. You have been warned. In 1967 the actor Patrick McGoohan was tired. He had been working on the hit series Danger Man for many years -- Danger Man had originally run from 1960 through 1962, then had taken a break, and had come back, retooled, with longer episodes in 1964. That longer series was a big hit, both in the UK and in the US, where it was retitled Secret Agent and had a new theme tune written by PF Sloan and Steve Barri and recorded by Johnny Rivers: [Excerpt: Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man"] But McGoohan was tired of playing John Drake, the agent, and announced he was going to quit the series. Instead, with the help of George Markstein, Danger Man's script editor, he created a totally new series, in which McGoohan would star, and which McGoohan would also write and direct key episodes of. This new series, The Prisoner, featured a spy who is only ever given the name Number Six, and who many fans -- though not McGoohan himself -- took to be the same character as John Drake. Number Six resigns from his job as a secret agent, and is kidnapped and taken to a place known only as The Village -- the series was filmed in Portmeirion, an unusual-looking town in Gwynnedd, in North Wales -- which is full of other ex-agents. There he is interrogated to try to find out why he has quit his job. It's never made clear whether the interrogators are his old employers or their enemies, and there's a certain suggestion that maybe there is no real distinction between the two sides, that they're both running the Village together. He spends the entire series trying to escape, but refuses to explain himself -- and there's some debate among viewers as to whether it's implied or not that part of the reason he doesn't explain himself is that he knows his interrogators wouldn't understand why he quit: [Excerpt: The Prisoner intro, from episode Once Upon a Time, ] Certainly that explanation would fit in with McGoohan's own personality. According to McGoohan, the final episode of The Prisoner was, at the time, the most watched TV show ever broadcast in the UK, as people tuned in to find out the identity of Number One, the person behind the Village, and to see if Number Six would break free. I don't think that's actually the case, but it's what McGoohan always claimed, and it was certainly a very popular series. I won't spoil the ending for those of you who haven't watched it -- it's a remarkable series -- but ultimately the series seems to decide that such questions don't matter and that even asking them is missing the point. It's a work that's open to multiple interpretations, and is left deliberately ambiguous, but one of the messages many people have taken away from it is that not only are we trapped by a society that oppresses us, we're also trapped by our own identities. You can run from the trap that society has placed you in, from other people's interpretations of your life, your work, and your motives, but you ultimately can't run from yourself, and any time you try to break out of a prison, you'll find yourself trapped in another prison of your own making. The most horrifying implication of the episode is that possibly even death itself won't be a release, and you will spend all eternity trying to escape from an identity you're trapped in. Viewers became so outraged, according to McGoohan, that he had to go into hiding for an extended period, and while his later claims that he never worked in Britain again are an exaggeration, it is true that for the remainder of his life he concentrated on doing work in the US instead, where he hadn't created such anger. That final episode of The Prisoner was also the only one to use a piece of contemporary pop music, in two crucial scenes: [Excerpt: The Prisoner, "Fall Out", "All You Need is Love"] Back in October 2020, we started what I thought would be a year-long look at the period from late 1962 through early 1967, but which has turned out for reasons beyond my control to take more like twenty months, with a song which was one of the last of the big pre-Beatles pop hits, though we looked at it after their first single, "Telstar" by the Tornadoes: [Excerpt: The Tornadoes, "Telstar"] There were many reasons for choosing that as one of the bookends for this fifty-episode chunk of the podcast -- you'll see many connections between that episode and this one if you listen to them back-to-back -- but among them was that it's a song inspired by the launch of the first ever communications satellite, and a sign of how the world was going to become smaller as the sixties went on. Of course, to start with communications satellites didn't do much in that regard -- they were expensive to use, and had limited bandwidth, and were only available during limited time windows, but symbolically they meant that for the first time ever, people could see and hear events thousands of miles away as they were happening. It's not a coincidence that Britain and France signed the agreement to develop Concorde, the first supersonic airliner, a month after the first Beatles single and four months after the Telstar satellite was launched. The world was becoming ever more interconnected -- people were travelling faster and further, getting news from other countries quicker, and there was more cultural conversation – and misunderstanding – between countries thousands of miles apart. The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, the man who also coined the phrase “the medium is the message”, thought that this ever-faster connection would fundamentally change basic modes of thought in the Western world. McLuhan thought that technology made possible whole new modes of thought, and that just as the printing press had, in his view, caused Western liberalism and individualism, so these new electronic media would cause the rise of a new collective mode of thought. In 1962, the year of Concorde, Telstar, and “Love Me Do”, McLuhan wrote a book called The Gutenberg Galaxy, in which he said: “Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.… Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time.…” He coined the term “the Global Village” to describe this new collectivism. The story we've seen over the last fifty episodes is one of a sort of cultural ping-pong between the USA and the UK, with innovations in American music inspiring British musicians, who in turn inspired American ones, whether that being the Beatles covering the Isley Brothers or the Rolling Stones doing a Bobby Womack song, or Paul Simon and Bob Dylan coming over to the UK and learning folk songs and guitar techniques from Martin Carthy. And increasingly we're going to see those influences spread to other countries, and influences coming *from* other countries. We've already seen one Jamaican artist, and the influence of Indian music has become very apparent. While the focus of this series is going to remain principally in the British Isles and North America, rock music was and is a worldwide phenomenon, and that's going to become increasingly a part of the story. And so in this episode we're going to look at a live performance -- well, mostly live -- that was seen by hundreds of millions of people all over the world as it happened, thanks to the magic of satellites: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "All You Need is Love"] When we left the Beatles, they had just finished recording "Tomorrow Never Knows", the most experimental track they had recorded up to that date, and if not the most experimental thing they *ever* recorded certainly in the top handful. But "Tomorrow Never Knows" was only the first track they recorded in the sessions for what would become arguably their greatest album, and certainly the one that currently has the most respect from critics. It's interesting to note that that album could have been very, very, different. When we think of Revolver now, we think of the innovative production of George Martin, and of Geoff Emerick and Ken Townshend's inventive ideas for pushing the sound of the equipment in Abbey Road studios, but until very late in the day the album was going to be recorded in the Stax studios in Memphis, with Steve Cropper producing -- whether George Martin would have been involved or not is something we don't even know. In 1965, the Rolling Stones had, as we've seen, started making records in the US, recording in LA and at the Chess studios in Chicago, and the Yardbirds had also been doing the same thing. Mick Jagger had become a convert to the idea of using American studios and working with American musicians, and he had constantly been telling Paul McCartney that the Beatles should do the same. Indeed, they'd put some feelers out in 1965 about the possibility of the group making an album with Holland, Dozier, and Holland in Detroit. Quite how this would have worked is hard to figure out -- Holland, Dozier, and Holland's skills were as songwriters, and in their work with a particular set of musicians -- so it's unsurprising that came to nothing. But recording at Stax was a different matter.  While Steve Cropper was a great songwriter in his own right, he was also adept at getting great sounds on covers of other people's material -- like on Otis Blue, the album he produced for Otis Redding in late 1965, which doesn't include a single Cropper original: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Satisfaction"] And the Beatles were very influenced by the records Stax were putting out, often namechecking Wilson Pickett in particular, and during the Rubber Soul sessions they had recorded a "Green Onions" soundalike track, imaginatively titled "12-Bar Original": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "12-Bar Original"] The idea of the group recording at Stax got far enough that they were actually booked in for two weeks starting the ninth of April, and there was even an offer from Elvis to let them stay at Graceland while they recorded, but then a couple of weeks earlier, the news leaked to the press, and Brian Epstein cancelled the booking. According to Cropper, Epstein talked about recording at the Atlantic studios in New York with him instead, but nothing went any further. It's hard to imagine what a Stax-based Beatles album would have been like, but even though it might have been a great album, it certainly wouldn't have been the Revolver we've come to know. Revolver is an unusual album in many ways, and one of the ways it's most distinct from the earlier Beatles albums is the dominance of keyboards. Both Lennon and McCartney had often written at the piano as well as the guitar -- McCartney more so than Lennon, but both had done so regularly -- but up to this point it had been normal for them to arrange the songs for guitars rather than keyboards, no matter how they'd started out. There had been the odd track where one of them, usually Lennon, would play a simple keyboard part, songs like "I'm Down" or "We Can Work it Out", but even those had been guitar records first and foremost. But on Revolver, that changed dramatically. There seems to have been a complex web of cause and effect here. Paul was becoming increasingly interested in moving his basslines away from simple walking basslines and root notes and the other staples of rock and roll basslines up to this point. As the sixties progressed, rock basslines were becoming ever more complex, and Tyler Mahan Coe has made a good case that this is largely down to innovations in production pioneered by Owen Bradley, and McCartney was certainly aware of Bradley's work -- he was a fan of Brenda Lee, who Bradley produced, for example. But the two influences that McCartney has mentioned most often in this regard are the busy, jazz-influenced, basslines that James Jamerson was playing at Motown: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "It's the Same Old Song"] And the basslines that Brian Wilson was writing for various Wrecking Crew bassists to play for the Beach Boys: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)"] Just to be clear, McCartney didn't hear that particular track until partway through the recording of Revolver, when Bruce Johnston visited the UK and brought with him an advance copy of Pet Sounds, but Pet Sounds influenced the later part of Revolver's recording, and Wilson had already started his experiments in that direction with the group's 1965 work. It's much easier to write a song with this kind of bassline, one that's integral to the composition, on the piano than it is to write it on a guitar, as you can work out the bassline with your left hand while working out the chords and melody with your right, so the habit that McCartney had already developed of writing on the piano made this easier. But also, starting with the recording of "Paperback Writer", McCartney switched his style of working in the studio. Where up to this point it had been normal for him to play bass as part of the recording of the basic track, playing with the other Beatles, he now started to take advantage of multitracking to overdub his bass later, so he could spend extra time getting the bassline exactly right. McCartney lived closer to Abbey Road than the other three Beatles, and so could more easily get there early or stay late and tweak his parts. But if McCartney wasn't playing bass while the guitars and drums were being recorded, that meant he could play something else, and so increasingly he would play piano during the recording of the basic track. And that in turn would mean that there wouldn't always *be* a need for guitars on the track, because the harmonic support they would provide would be provided by the piano instead. This, as much as anything else, is the reason that Revolver sounds so radically different to any other Beatles album. Up to this point, with *very* rare exceptions like "Yesterday", every Beatles record, more or less, featured all four of the Beatles playing instruments. Now John and George weren't playing on "Good Day Sunshine" or "For No One", John wasn't playing on "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Eleanor Rigby" features no guitars or drums at all, and George's "Love You To" only features himself, plus a little tambourine from Ringo (Paul recorded a part for that one, but it doesn't seem to appear on the finished track). Of the three songwriting Beatles, the only one who at this point was consistently requiring the instrumental contributions of all the other band members was John, and even he did without Paul on "She Said, She Said", which by all accounts features either John or George on bass, after Paul had a rare bout of unprofessionalism and left the studio. Revolver is still an album made by a group -- and most of those tracks that don't feature John or George instrumentally still feature them vocally -- it's still a collaborative work in all the best ways. But it's no longer an album made by four people playing together in the same room at the same time. After starting work on "Tomorrow Never Knows", the next track they started work on was Paul's "Got to Get You Into My Life", but as it would turn out they would work on that song throughout most of the sessions for the album -- in a sign of how the group would increasingly work from this point on, Paul's song was subject to multiple re-recordings and tweakings in the studio, as he tinkered to try to make it perfect. The first recording to be completed for the album, though, was almost as much of a departure in its own way as "Tomorrow Never Knows" had been. George's song "Love You To" shows just how inspired he was by the music of Ravi Shankar, and how devoted he was to Indian music. While a few months earlier he had just about managed to pick out a simple melody on the sitar for "Norwegian Wood", by this point he was comfortable enough with Indian classical music that I've seen many, many sources claim that an outside session player is playing sitar on the track, though Anil Bhagwat, the tabla player on the track, always insisted that it was entirely Harrison's playing: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] There is a *lot* of debate as to whether it's George playing on the track, and I feel a little uncomfortable making a definitive statement in either direction. On the one hand I find it hard to believe that Harrison got that good that quickly on an unfamiliar instrument, when we know he wasn't a naturally facile musician. All the stories we have about his work in the studio suggest that he had to work very hard on his guitar solos, and that he would frequently fluff them. As a technical guitarist, Harrison was only mediocre -- his value lay in his inventiveness, not in technical ability -- and he had been playing guitar for over a decade, but sitar only a few months. There's also some session documentation suggesting that an unknown sitar player was hired. On the other hand there's the testimony of Anil Bhagwat that Harrison played the part himself, and he has been very firm on the subject, saying "If you go on the Internet there are a lot of questions asked about "Love You To". They say 'It's not George playing the sitar'. I can tell you here and now -- 100 percent it was George on sitar throughout. There were no other musicians involved. It was just me and him." And several people who are more knowledgeable than myself about the instrument have suggested that the sitar part on the track is played the way that a rock guitarist would play rather than the way someone with more knowledge of Indian classical music would play -- there's a blues feeling to some of the bends that apparently no genuine Indian classical musician would naturally do. I would suggest that the best explanation is that there's a professional sitar player trying to replicate a part that Harrison had previously demonstrated, while Harrison was in turn trying his best to replicate the sound of Ravi Shankar's work. Certainly the instrumental section sounds far more fluent, and far more stylistically correct, than one would expect: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] Where previous attempts at what got called "raga-rock" had taken a couple of surface features of Indian music -- some form of a drone, perhaps a modal scale -- and had generally used a guitar made to sound a little bit like a sitar, or had a sitar playing normal rock riffs, Harrison's song seems to be a genuine attempt to hybridise Indian ragas and rock music, combining the instrumentation, modes, and rhythmic complexity of someone like Ravi Shankar with lyrics that are seemingly inspired by Bob Dylan and a fairly conventional pop song structure (and a tiny bit of fuzz guitar). It's a record that could only be made by someone who properly understood both the Indian music he's emulating and the conventions of the Western pop song, and understood how those conventions could work together. Indeed, one thing I've rarely seen pointed out is how cleverly the album is sequenced, so that "Love You To" is followed by possibly the most conventional song on Revolver, "Here, There, and Everywhere", which was recorded towards the end of the sessions. Both songs share a distinctive feature not shared by the rest of the album, so the two songs can sound more of a pair than they otherwise would, retrospectively making "Love You To" seem more conventional than it is and "Here, There, and Everywhere" more unconventional -- both have as an introduction a separate piece of music that states some of the melodic themes of the rest of the song but isn't repeated later. In the case of "Love You To" it's the free-tempo bit at the beginning, characteristic of a lot of Indian music: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] While in the case of "Here, There, and Everywhere" it's the part that mimics an older style of songwriting, a separate intro of the type that would have been called a verse when written by the Gershwins or Cole Porter, but of course in the intervening decades "verse" had come to mean something else, so we now no longer have a specific term for this kind of intro -- but as you can hear, it's doing very much the same thing as that "Love You To" intro: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] In the same day as the group completed "Love You To", overdubbing George's vocal and Ringo's tambourine, they also started work on a song that would show off a lot of the new techniques they had been working on in very different ways. Paul's "Paperback Writer" could indeed be seen as part of a loose trilogy with "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows", one song by each of the group's three songwriters exploring the idea of a song that's almost all on one chord. Both "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Love You To" are based on a drone with occasional hints towards moving to one other chord. In the case of "Paperback Writer", the entire song stays on a single chord until the title -- it's on a G7 throughout until the first use of the word "writer", when it quickly goes to a C for two bars. I'm afraid I'm going to have to sing to show you how little the chords actually change, because the riff disguises this lack of movement somewhat, but the melody is also far more horizontal than most of McCartney's, so this shouldn't sound too painful, I hope: [demonstrates] This is essentially the exact same thing that both "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" do, and all three have very similarly structured rising and falling modal melodies. There's also a bit of "Paperback Writer" that seems to tie directly into "Love You To", but also points to a possible very non-Indian inspiration for part of "Love You To". The Beach Boys' single "Sloop John B" was released in the UK a couple of days after the sessions for "Paperback Writer" and "Love You To", but it had been released in the US a month before, and the Beatles all got copies of every record in the American top thirty shipped to them. McCartney and Harrison have specifically pointed to it as an influence on "Paperback Writer". "Sloop John B" has a section where all the instruments drop out and we're left with just the group's vocal harmonies: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B"] And that seems to have been the inspiration behind the similar moment at a similar point in "Paperback Writer", which is used in place of a middle eight and also used for the song's intro: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Which is very close to what Harrison does at the end of each verse of "Love You To", where the instruments drop out for him to sing a long melismatic syllable before coming back in: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love You To"] Essentially, other than "Got to Get You Into My Life", which is an outlier and should not be counted, the first three songs attempted during the Revolver sessions are variations on a common theme, and it's a sign that no matter how different the results might  sound, the Beatles really were very much a group at this point, and were sharing ideas among themselves and developing those ideas in similar ways. "Paperback Writer" disguises what it's doing somewhat by having such a strong riff. Lennon referred to "Paperback Writer" as "son of 'Day Tripper'", and in terms of the Beatles' singles it's actually their third iteration of this riff idea, which they originally got from Bobby Parker's "Watch Your Step": [Excerpt: Bobby Parker, "Watch Your Step"] Which became the inspiration for "I Feel Fine": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Feel Fine"] Which they varied for "Day Tripper": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Day Tripper"] And which then in turn got varied for "Paperback Writer": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] As well as compositional ideas, there are sonic ideas shared between "Paperback Writer", "Tomorrow Never Knows", and "Love You To", and which would be shared by the rest of the tracks the Beatles recorded in the first half of 1966. Since Geoff Emerick had become the group's principal engineer, they'd started paying more attention to how to get a fuller sound, and so Emerick had miced the tabla on "Love You To" much more closely than anyone would normally mic an instrument from classical music, creating a deep, thudding sound, and similarly he had changed the way they recorded the drums on "Tomorrow Never Knows", again giving a much fuller sound. But the group also wanted the kind of big bass sounds they'd loved on records coming out of America -- sounds that no British studio was getting, largely because it was believed that if you cut too loud a bass sound into a record it would make the needle jump out of the groove. The new engineering team of Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott, though, thought that it was likely you could keep the needle in the groove if you had a smoother frequency response. You could do that if you used a microphone with a larger diaphragm to record the bass, but how could you do that? Inspiration finally struck -- loudspeakers are actually the same thing as microphones wired the other way round, so if you wired up a loudspeaker as if it were a microphone you could get a *really big* speaker, place it in front of the bass amp, and get a much stronger bass sound. The experiment wasn't a total success -- the sound they got had to be processed quite extensively to get rid of room noise, and then compressed in order to further prevent the needle-jumping issue, and so it's a muddier, less defined, tone than they would have liked, but one thing that can't be denied is that "Paperback Writer"'s bass sound is much, much, louder than on any previous Beatles record: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Almost every track the group recorded during the Revolver sessions involved all sorts of studio innovations, though rarely anything as truly revolutionary as the artificial double-tracking they'd used on "Tomorrow Never Knows", and which also appeared on "Paperback Writer" -- indeed, as "Paperback Writer" was released several months before Revolver, it became the first record released to use the technique. I could easily devote a good ten minutes to every track on Revolver, and to "Paperback Writer"s B-side, "Rain", but this is already shaping up to be an extraordinarily long episode and there's a lot of material to get through, so I'll break my usual pattern of devoting a Patreon bonus episode to something relatively obscure, and this week's bonus will be on "Rain" itself. "Paperback Writer", though, deserved the attention here even though it was not one of the group's more successful singles -- it did go to number one, but it didn't hit number one in the UK charts straight away, being kept off the top by "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra for the first week: [Excerpt: Frank Sinatra, "Strangers in the Night"] Coincidentally, "Strangers in the Night" was co-written by Bert Kaempfert, the German musician who had produced the group's very first recording sessions with Tony Sheridan back in 1961. On the group's German tour in 1966 they met up with Kaempfert again, and John greeted him by singing the first couple of lines of the Sinatra record. The single was the lowest-selling Beatles single in the UK since "Love Me Do". In the US it only made number one for two non-consecutive weeks, with "Strangers in the Night" knocking it off for a week in between. Now, by literally any other band's standards, that's still a massive hit, and it was the Beatles' tenth UK number one in a row (or ninth, depending on which chart you use for "Please Please Me"), but it's a sign that the group were moving out of the first phase of total unequivocal dominance of the charts. It was a turning point in a lot of other ways as well. Up to this point, while the group had been experimenting with different lyrical subjects on album tracks, every single had lyrics about romantic relationships -- with the possible exception of "Help!", which was about Lennon's emotional state but written in such a way that it could be heard as a plea to a lover. But in the case of "Paperback Writer", McCartney was inspired by his Aunt Mill asking him "Why do you write songs about love all the time? Can you ever write about a horse or the summit conference or something interesting?" His response was to think "All right, Aunt Mill, I'll show you", and to come up with a lyric that was very much in the style of the social satires that bands like the Kinks were releasing at the time. People often miss the humour in the lyric for "Paperback Writer", but there's a huge amount of comedy in lyrics about someone writing to a publisher saying they'd written a book based on someone else's book, and one can only imagine the feeling of weary recognition in slush-pile readers throughout the world as they heard the enthusiastic "It's a thousand pages, give or take a few, I'll be writing more in a week or two. I can make it longer..." From this point on, the group wouldn't release a single that was unambiguously about a romantic relationship until "The Ballad of John and Yoko",  the last single released while the band were still together. "Paperback Writer" also saw the Beatles for the first time making a promotional film -- what we would now call a rock video -- rather than make personal appearances on TV shows. The film was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who the group would work with again in 1969, and shows Paul with a chipped front tooth -- he'd been in an accident while riding mopeds with his friend Tara Browne a few months earlier, and hadn't yet got round to having the tooth capped. When he did, the change in his teeth was one of the many bits of evidence used by conspiracy theorists to prove that the real Paul McCartney was dead and replaced by a lookalike. It also marks a change in who the most prominent Beatle on the group's A-sides was. Up to this point, Paul had had one solo lead on an A-side -- "Can't Buy Me Love" -- and everything else had been either a song with multiple vocalists like "Day Tripper" or "Love Me Do", or a song with a clear John lead like "Ticket to Ride" or "I Feel Fine". In the rest of their career, counting "Paperback Writer", the group would release nine new singles that hadn't already been included on an album. Of those nine singles, one was a double A-side with one John song and one Paul song, two had John songs on the A-side, and the other six were Paul. Where up to this point John had been "lead Beatle", for the rest of the sixties, Paul would be the group's driving force. Oddly, Paul got rather defensive about the record when asked about it in interviews after it failed to go straight to the top, saying "It's not our best single by any means, but we're very satisfied with it". But especially in its original mono mix it actually packs a powerful punch: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] When the "Paperback Writer" single was released, an unusual image was used in the advertising -- a photo of the Beatles dressed in butchers' smocks, covered in blood, with chunks of meat and the dismembered body parts of baby dolls lying around on them. The image was meant as part of a triptych parodying religious art -- the photo on the left was to be an image showing the four Beatles connected to a woman by an umbilical cord made of sausages, the middle panel was meant to be this image, but with halos added over the Beatles' heads, and the panel on the right was George hammering a nail into John's head, symbolising both crucifixion and that the group were real, physical, people, not just images to be worshipped -- these weren't imaginary nails, and they weren't imaginary people. The photographer Robert Whittaker later said: “I did a photograph of the Beatles covered in raw meat, dolls and false teeth. Putting meat, dolls and false teeth with The Beatles is essentially part of the same thing, the breakdown of what is regarded as normal. The actual conception for what I still call “Somnambulant Adventure” was Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. He comes across people worshipping a golden calf. All over the world I'd watched people worshiping like idols, like gods, four Beatles. To me they were just stock standard normal people. But this emotion that fans poured on them made me wonder where Christianity was heading.” The image wasn't that controversial in the UK, when it was used to advertise "Paperback Writer", but in the US it was initially used for the cover of an album, Yesterday... And Today, which was made up of a few tracks that had been left off the US versions of the Rubber Soul and Help! albums, plus both sides of the "We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper" single, and three rough mixes of songs that had been recorded for Revolver -- "Doctor Robert", "And Your Bird Can Sing", and "I'm Only Sleeping", which was the song that sounded most different from the mixes that were finally released: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping (Yesterday... and Today mix)"] Those three songs were all Lennon songs, which had the unfortunate effect that when the US version of Revolver was brought out later in the year, only two of the songs on the album were by Lennon, with six by McCartney and three by Harrison. Some have suggested that this was the motivation for the use of the butcher image on the cover of Yesterday... And Today -- saying it was the Beatles' protest against Capitol "butchering" their albums -- but in truth it was just that Capitol's art director chose the cover because he liked the image. Alan Livingston, the president of Capitol was not so sure, and called Brian Epstein to ask if the group would be OK with them using a different image. Epstein checked with John Lennon, but Lennon liked the image and so Epstein told Livingston the group insisted on them using that cover. Even though for the album cover the bloodstains on the butchers' smocks were airbrushed out, after Capitol had pressed up a million copies of the mono version of the album and two hundred thousand copies of the stereo version, and they'd sent out sixty thousand promo copies, they discovered that no record shops would stock the album with that cover. It cost Capitol more than two hundred thousand dollars to recall the album and replace the cover with a new one -- though while many of the covers were destroyed, others had the new cover, with a more acceptable photo of the group, pasted over them, and people have later carefully steamed off the sticker to reveal the original. This would not be the last time in 1966 that something that was intended as a statement on religion and the way people viewed the Beatles would cause the group trouble in America. In the middle of the recording sessions for Revolver, the group also made what turned out to be their last ever UK live performance in front of a paying audience. The group had played the NME Poll-Winners' Party every year since 1963, and they were always shows that featured all the biggest acts in the country at the time -- the 1966 show featured, as well as the Beatles and a bunch of smaller acts, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Yardbirds, Roy Orbison, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, the Seekers, the Small Faces, the Walker Brothers, and Dusty Springfield. Unfortunately, while these events were always filmed for TV broadcast, the Beatles' performance on the first of May wasn't filmed. There are various stories about what happened, but the crux appears to be a disagreement between Andrew Oldham and Brian Epstein, sparked by John Lennon. When the Beatles got to the show, they were upset to discover that they had to wait around before going on stage -- normally, the awards would all be presented at the end, after all the performances, but the Rolling Stones had asked that the Beatles not follow them directly, so after the Stones finished their set, there would be a break for the awards to be given out, and then the Beatles would play their set, in front of an audience that had been bored by twenty-five minutes of awards ceremony, rather than one that had been excited by all the bands that came before them. John Lennon was annoyed, and insisted that the Beatles were going to go on straight after the Rolling Stones -- he seems to have taken this as some sort of power play by the Stones and to have got his hackles up about it. He told Epstein to deal with the people from the NME. But the NME people said that they had a contract with Andrew Oldham, and they weren't going to break it. Oldham refused to change the terms of the contract. Lennon said that he wasn't going to go on stage if they didn't directly follow the Stones. Maurice Kinn, the publisher of the NME, told Epstein that he wasn't going to break the contract with Oldham, and that if the Beatles didn't appear on stage, he would get Jimmy Savile, who was compering the show, to go out on stage and tell the ten thousand fans in the audience that the Beatles were backstage refusing to appear. He would then sue NEMS for breach of contract *and* NEMS would be liable for any damage caused by the rioting that was sure to happen. Lennon screamed a lot of abuse at Kinn, and told him the group would never play one of their events again, but the group did go on stage -- but because they hadn't yet signed the agreement to allow their performance to be filmed, they refused to allow it to be recorded. Apparently Andrew Oldham took all this as a sign that Epstein was starting to lose control of the group. Also during May 1966 there were visits from musicians from other countries, continuing the cultural exchange that was increasingly influencing the Beatles' art. Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys came over to promote the group's new LP, Pet Sounds, which had been largely the work of Brian Wilson, who had retired from touring to concentrate on working in the studio. Johnston played the record for John and Paul, who listened to it twice, all the way through, in silence, in Johnston's hotel room: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"] According to Johnston, after they'd listened through the album twice, they went over to a piano and started whispering to each other, picking out chords. Certainly the influence of Pet Sounds is very noticeable on songs like "Here, There, and Everywhere", written and recorded a few weeks after this meeting: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] That track, and the last track recorded for the album, "She Said She Said" were unusual in one very important respect -- they were recorded while the Beatles were no longer under contract to EMI Records. Their contract expired on the fifth of June, 1966, and they finished Revolver without it having been renewed -- it would be several months before their new contract was signed, and it's rather lucky for music lovers that Brian Epstein was the kind of manager who considered personal relationships and basic honour and decency more important than the legal niceties, unlike any other managers of the era, otherwise we would not have Revolver in the form we know it today. After the meeting with Johnston, but before the recording of those last couple of Revolver tracks, the Beatles also met up again with Bob Dylan, who was on a UK tour with a new, loud, band he was working with called The Hawks. While the Beatles and Dylan all admired each other, there was by this point a lot of wariness on both sides, especially between Lennon and Dylan, both of them very similar personality types and neither wanting to let their guard down around the other or appear unhip. There's a famous half-hour-long film sequence of Lennon and Dylan sharing a taxi, which is a fascinating, excruciating, example of two insecure but arrogant men both trying desperately to impress the other but also equally desperate not to let the other know that they want to impress them: [Excerpt: Dylan and Lennon taxi ride] The day that was filmed, Lennon and Harrison also went to see Dylan play at the Royal Albert Hall. This tour had been controversial, because Dylan's band were loud and raucous, and Dylan's fans in the UK still thought of him as a folk musician. At one gig, earlier on the tour, an audience member had famously yelled out "Judas!" -- (just on the tiny chance that any of my listeners don't know that, Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus to the authorities, leading to his crucifixion) -- and that show was for many years bootlegged as the "Royal Albert Hall" show, though in fact it was recorded at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. One of the *actual* Royal Albert Hall shows was released a few years ago -- the one the night before Lennon and Harrison saw Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone", Royal Albert Hall 1966] The show Lennon and Harrison saw would be Dylan's last for many years. Shortly after returning to the US, Dylan was in a motorbike accident, the details of which are still mysterious, and which some fans claim was faked altogether. The accident caused him to cancel all the concert dates he had booked, and devote himself to working in the studio for several years just like Brian Wilson. And from even further afield than America, Ravi Shankar came over to Britain, to work with his friend the violinist Yehudi Menuhin, on a duet album, West Meets East, that was an example in the classical world of the same kind of international cross-fertilisation that was happening in the pop world: [Excerpt: Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar, "Prabhati (based on Raga Gunkali)"] While he was in the UK, Shankar also performed at the Royal Festival Hall, and George Harrison went to the show. He'd seen Shankar live the year before, but this time he met up with him afterwards, and later said "He was the first person that impressed me in a way that was beyond just being a famous celebrity. Ravi was my link to the Vedic world. Ravi plugged me into the whole of reality. Elvis impressed me when I was a kid, and impressed me when I met him, but you couldn't later on go round to him and say 'Elvis, what's happening with the universe?'" After completing recording and mixing the as-yet-unnamed album, which had been by far the longest recording process of their career, and which still nearly sixty years later regularly tops polls of the best album of all time, the Beatles took a well-earned break. For a whole two days, at which point they flew off to Germany to do a three-day tour, on their way to Japan, where they were booked to play five shows at the Budokan. Unfortunately for the group, while they had no idea of this when they were booked to do the shows, many in Japan saw the Budokan as sacred ground, and they were the first ever Western group to play there. This led to numerous death threats and loud protests from far-right activists offended at the Beatles defiling their religious and nationalistic sensibilities. As a result, the police were on high alert -- so high that there were three thousand police in the audience for the shows, in a venue which only held ten thousand audience members. That's according to Mark Lewisohn's Complete Beatles Chronicle, though I have to say that the rather blurry footage of the audience in the video of those shows doesn't seem to show anything like those numbers. But frankly I'll take Lewisohn's word over that footage, as he's not someone to put out incorrect information. The threats to the group also meant that they had to be kept in their hotel rooms at all times except when actually performing, though they did make attempts to get out. At the press conference for the Tokyo shows, the group were also asked publicly for the first time their views on the war in Vietnam, and John replied "Well, we think about it every day, and we don't agree with it and we think that it's wrong. That's how much interest we take. That's all we can do about it... and say that we don't like it". I say they were asked publicly for the first time, because George had been asked about it for a series of interviews Maureen Cleave had done with the group a couple of months earlier, as we'll see in a bit, but nobody was paying attention to those interviews. Brian Epstein was upset that the question had gone to John. He had hoped that the inevitable Vietnam question would go to Paul, who he thought might be a bit more tactful. The last thing he needed was John Lennon saying something that would upset the Americans before their tour there a few weeks later. Luckily, people in America seemed to have better things to do than pay attention to John Lennon's opinions. The support acts for the Japanese shows included  several of the biggest names in Japanese rock music -- or "group sounds" as the genre was called there, Japanese people having realised that trying to say the phrase "rock and roll" would open them up to ridicule given that it had both "r" and "l" sounds in the phrase. The man who had coined the term "group sounds", Jackey Yoshikawa, was there with his group the Blue Comets, as was Isao Bito, who did a rather good cover version of Cliff Richard's "Dynamite": [Excerpt: Isao Bito, "Dynamite"] Bito, the Blue Comets, and the other two support acts, Yuya Uchida and the Blue Jeans, all got together to perform a specially written song, "Welcome Beatles": [Excerpt: "Welcome Beatles" ] But while the Japanese audience were enthusiastic, they were much less vocal about their enthusiasm than the audiences the Beatles were used to playing for. The group were used, of course, to playing in front of hordes of screaming teenagers who could not hear a single note, but because of the fear that a far-right terrorist would assassinate one of the group members, the police had imposed very, very, strict rules on the audience. Nobody in the audience was allowed to get out of their seat for any reason, and the police would clamp down very firmly on anyone who was too demonstrative. Because of that, the group could actually hear themselves, and they sounded sloppy as hell, especially on the newer material. Not that there was much of that. The only song they did from the Revolver sessions was "Paperback Writer", the new single, and while they did do a couple of tracks from Rubber Soul, those were under-rehearsed. As John said at the start of this tour, "I can't play any of Rubber Soul, it's so unrehearsed. The only time I played any of the numbers on it was when I recorded it. I forget about songs. They're only valid for a certain time." That's certainly borne out by the sound of their performances of Rubber Soul material at the Budokan: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "If I Needed Someone (live at the Budokan)"] It was while they were in Japan as well that they finally came up with the title for their new album. They'd been thinking of all sorts of ideas, like Abracadabra and Magic Circle, and tossing names around with increasing desperation for several days -- at one point they seem to have just started riffing on other groups' albums, and seem to have apparently seriously thought about naming the record in parodic tribute to their favourite artists -- suggestions included The Beatles On Safari, after the Beach Boys' Surfin' Safari (and possibly with a nod to their recent Pet Sounds album cover with animals, too), The Freewheelin' Beatles, after Dylan's second album, and my favourite, Ringo's suggestion After Geography, for the Rolling Stones' Aftermath. But eventually Paul came up with Revolver -- like Rubber Soul, a pun, in this case because the record itself revolves when on a turntable. Then it was off to the Philippines, and if the group thought Japan had been stressful, they had no idea what was coming. The trouble started in the Philippines from the moment they stepped off the plane, when they were bundled into a car without Neil Aspinall or Brian Epstein, and without their luggage, which was sent to customs. This was a problem in itself -- the group had got used to essentially being treated like diplomats, and to having their baggage let through customs without being searched, and so they'd started freely carrying various illicit substances with them. This would obviously be a problem -- but as it turned out, this was just to get a "customs charge" paid by Brian Epstein. But during their initial press conference the group were worried, given the hostility they'd faced from officialdom, that they were going to be arrested during the conference itself. They were asked what they would tell the Rolling Stones, who were going to be visiting the Philippines shortly after, and Lennon just said "We'll warn them". They also asked "is there a war on in the Philippines? Why is everybody armed?" At this time, the Philippines had a new leader, Ferdinand Marcos -- who is not to be confused with his son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, also known as Bongbong Marcos, who just became President-Elect there last month. Marcos Sr was a dictatorial kleptocrat, one of the worst leaders of the latter half of the twentieth century, but that wasn't evident yet. He'd been elected only a few months earlier, and had presented himself as a Kennedy-like figure -- a young man who was also a war hero. He'd recently switched parties from the Liberal party to the right-wing Nacionalista Party, but wasn't yet being thought of as the monstrous dictator he later became. The person organising the Philippines shows had been ordered to get the Beatles to visit Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos at 11AM on the day of the show, but for some reason had instead put on their itinerary just the *suggestion* that the group should meet the Marcoses, and had put the time down as 3PM, and the Beatles chose to ignore that suggestion -- they'd refused to do that kind of government-official meet-and-greet ever since an incident in 1964 at the British Embassy in Washington where someone had cut off a bit of Ringo's hair. A military escort turned up at the group's hotel in the morning, to take them for their meeting. The group were all still in their rooms, and Brian Epstein was still eating breakfast and refused to disturb them, saying "Go back and tell the generals we're not coming." The group gave their performances as scheduled, but meanwhile there was outrage at the way the Beatles had refused to meet the Marcos family, who had brought hundreds of children -- friends of their own children, and relatives of top officials -- to a party to meet the group. Brian Epstein went on TV and tried to smooth things over, but the broadcast was interrupted by static and his message didn't get through to anyone. The next day, the group's security was taken away, as were the cars to take them to the airport. When they got to the airport, the escalators were turned off and the group were beaten up at the arrangement of the airport manager, who said in 1984 "I beat up the Beatles. I really thumped them. First I socked Epstein and he went down... then I socked Lennon and Ringo in the face. I was kicking them. They were pleading like frightened chickens. That's what happens when you insult the First Lady." Even on the plane there were further problems -- Brian Epstein and the group's road manager Mal Evans were both made to get off the plane to sort out supposed financial discrepancies, which led to them worrying that they were going to be arrested or worse -- Evans told the group to tell his wife he loved her as he left the plane. But eventually, they were able to leave, and after a brief layover in India -- which Ringo later said was the first time he felt he'd been somewhere truly foreign, as opposed to places like Germany or the USA which felt basically like home -- they got back to England: [Excerpt: "Ordinary passenger!"] When asked what they were going to do next, George replied “We're going to have a couple of weeks to recuperate before we go and get beaten up by the Americans,” The story of the "we're bigger than Jesus" controversy is one of the most widely misreported events in the lives of the Beatles, which is saying a great deal. One book that I've encountered, and one book only, Steve Turner's Beatles '66, tells the story of what actually happened, and even that book seems to miss some emphases. I've pieced what follows together from Turner's book and from an academic journal article I found which has some more detail. As far as I can tell, every single other book on the Beatles released up to this point bases their account of the story on an inaccurate press statement put out by Brian Epstein, not on the truth. Here's the story as it's generally told. John Lennon gave an interview to his friend, Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, during which he made some comments about how it was depressing that Christianity was losing relevance in the eyes of the public, and that the Beatles are more popular than Jesus, speaking casually because he was talking to a friend. That story was run in the Evening Standard more-or-less unnoticed, but then an American teen magazine picked up on the line about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus, reprinted chunks of the interview out of context and without the Beatles' knowledge or permission, as a way to stir up controversy, and there was an outcry, with people burning Beatles records and death threats from the Ku Klux Klan. That's... not exactly what happened. The first thing that you need to understand to know what happened is that Datebook wasn't a typical teen magazine. It *looked* just like a typical teen magazine, certainly, and much of its content was the kind of thing that you would get in Tiger Beat or any of the other magazines aimed at teenage girls -- the September 1966 issue was full of articles like "Life with the Walker Brothers... by their Road Manager", and interviews with the Dave Clark Five -- but it also had a long history of publishing material that was intended to make its readers think about social issues of the time, particularly Civil Rights. Arthur Unger, the magazine's editor and publisher, was a gay man in an interracial relationship, and while the subject of homosexuality was too taboo in the late fifties and sixties for him to have his magazine cover that, he did regularly include articles decrying segregation and calling for the girls reading the magazine to do their part on a personal level to stamp out racism. Datebook had regularly contained articles like one from 1963 talking about how segregation wasn't just a problem in the South, saying "If we are so ‘integrated' why must men in my own city of Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love, picket city hall because they are discriminated against when it comes to getting a job? And how come I am still unable to take my dark- complexioned friends to the same roller skating rink or swimming pool that I attend?” One of the writers for the magazine later said “We were much more than an entertainment magazine . . . . We tried to get kids involved in social issues . . . . It was a well-received magazine, recommended by libraries and schools, but during the Civil Rights period we did get pulled off a lot of stands in the South because of our views on integration” Art Unger, the editor and publisher, wasn't the only one pushing this liberal, integrationist, agenda. The managing editor at the time, Danny Fields, was another gay man who wanted to push the magazine even further than Unger, and who would later go on to manage the Stooges and the Ramones, being credited by some as being the single most important figure in punk rock's development, and being immortalised by the Ramones in their song "Danny Says": [Excerpt: The Ramones, "Danny Says"] So this was not a normal teen magazine, and that's certainly shown by the cover of the September 1966 issue, which as well as talking about the interviews with John Lennon and Paul McCartney inside, also advertised articles on Timothy Leary advising people to turn on, tune in, and drop out; an editorial about how interracial dating must be the next step after desegregation of schools, and a piece on "the ten adults you dig/hate the most" -- apparently the adult most teens dug in 1966 was Jackie Kennedy, the most hated was Barry Goldwater, and President Johnson, Billy Graham, and Martin Luther King appeared in the top ten on both lists. Now, in the early part of the year Maureen Cleave had done a whole series of articles on the Beatles -- double-page spreads on each band member, plus Brian Epstein, visiting them in their own homes (apart from Paul, who she met at a restaurant) and discussing their daily lives, their thoughts, and portraying them as rounded individuals. These articles are actually fascinating, because of something that everyone who met the Beatles in this period pointed out. When interviewed separately, all of them came across as thoughtful individuals, with their own opinions about all sorts of subjects, and their own tastes and senses of humour. But when two or more of them were together -- especially when John and Paul were interviewed together, but even in social situations, they would immediately revert to flip in-jokes and riffing on each other's statements, never revealing anything about themselves as individuals, but just going into Beatle mode -- simultaneously preserving the band's image, closing off outsiders, *and* making sure they didn't do or say anything that would get them mocked by the others. Cleave, as someone who actually took them all seriously, managed to get some very revealing information about all of them. In the article on Ringo, which is the most superficial -- one gets the impression that Cleave found him rather difficult to talk to when compared to the other, more verbally facile, band members -- she talked about how he had a lot of Wild West and military memorabilia, how he was a devoted family man and also devoted to his friends -- he had moved to the suburbs to be close to John and George, who already lived there. The most revealing quote about Ringo's personality was him saying "Of course that's the great thing about being married -- you have a house to sit in and company all the time. And you can still go to clubs, a bonus for being married. I love being a family man." While she looked at the other Beatles' tastes in literature in detail, she'd noted that the only books Ringo owned that weren't just for show were a few science fiction paperbacks, but that as he said "I'm not thick, it's just that I'm not educated. People can use words and I won't know what they mean. I say 'me' instead of 'my'." Ringo also didn't have a drum kit at home, saying he only played when he was on stage or in the studio, and that you couldn't practice on your own, you needed to play with other people. In the article on George, she talked about how he was learning the sitar,  and how he was thinking that it might be a good idea to go to India to study the sitar with Ravi Shankar for six months. She also talks about how during the interview, he played the guitar pretty much constantly, playing everything from songs from "Hello Dolly" to pieces by Bach to "the Trumpet Voluntary", by which she presumably means Clarke's "Prince of Denmark's March": [Excerpt: Jeremiah Clarke, "Prince of Denmark's March"] George was also the most outspoken on the subjects of politics, religion, and society, linking the ongoing war in Vietnam with the UK's reverence for the Second World War, saying "I think about it every day and it's wrong. Anything to do with war is wrong. They're all wrapped up in their Nelsons and their Churchills and their Montys -- always talking about war heroes. Look at All Our Yesterdays [a show on ITV that showed twenty-five-year-old newsreels] -- how we killed a few more Huns here and there. Makes me sick. They're the sort who are leaning on their walking sticks and telling us a few years in the army would do us good." He also had very strong words to say about religion, saying "I think religion falls flat on its face. All this 'love thy neighbour' but none of them are doing it. How can anybody get into the position of being Pope and accept all the glory and the money and the Mercedes-Benz and that? I could never be Pope until I'd sold my rich gates and my posh hat. I couldn't sit there with all that money on me and believe I was religious. Why can't we bring all this out in the open? Why is there all this stuff about blasphemy? If Christianity's as good as they say it is, it should stand up to a bit of discussion." Harrison also comes across as a very private person, saying "People keep saying, ‘We made you what you are,' well, I made Mr. Hovis what he is and I don't go round crawling over his gates and smashing up the wall round his house." (Hovis is a British company that makes bread and wholegrain flour). But more than anything else he comes across as an instinctive anti-authoritarian, being angry at bullying teachers, Popes, and Prime Ministers. McCartney's profile has him as the most self-consciously arty -- he talks about the plays of Alfred Jarry and the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti (for magnetic tape)"] Though he was very worried that he might be sounding a little too pretentious, saying “I don't want to sound like Jonathan Miller going on" --

PORGY AND BESS COMPOSER: George Gershwin LYRICIST: Ira Gershwin, DuBose Heyward BOOK: DuBose Heyward SOURCE: Porgy by DuBose Heyward (1925)  DIRECTOR: Rouben Mamoulian PRINCIPLE CAST: Anne Brown (Bess), John W. Bubbles (Sportin' Life), Todd Duncan (Porgy),  OPENING DATE: October 10th, 1935 CLOSING DATE: January 25th, 1936 PERFORMANCES: 124 SYNOPSIS: When the murderous Crown abandons his lover Bess, a disabled beggar, Porgy, vows to protect her. When Crown vows to return and take Bess away, Porgy and Bess's love for one another is thrown into peril.  With a score and libretto by George and Ira Gershwin with DuBose Heyward respectively, Porgy and Bess tells the controversial love story of a disabled Black man named Porgy through the style of grand opera. The premiere production featured a troupe of classically trained Black singers and was significant for the way it fused American folk music with classical orchestrations. Key songs became standards in their day, and ‘Summertime' maintains its popularity as a jazz cover. Davóne Tines explores the complexity of this piece, specifically how it relates to the black experience being created through a white lens.  Davóne Tines- Heralded as a "singer of immense power and fervor" and “[one] of the most powerful voices of our time” (@latimes) "the immensely gifted American bass-baritone Davóne Tines has won acclaim, and advanced the field of classical music." (@nytimes) this “next generation leader (Time Magazine) is a path-breaking artist at the intersection of many histories, cultures, and aesthetics, his work blends opera, spirituals, gospel, and anthems, as a means to tell a deeply personal story of perseverance and human connection. SOURCES Porgy and Bess Members of the Original Broadway Cast Recording. Decca (1940) Porgy and Bess, starring Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier, directed by Otto Preminger. Columbia Pictures (1959) The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America's Most Famous Opera by Ellen Noonan, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (2012) The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess: A 75th Anniversary Celebration by Robin Thompson, Amadeus (2010) “On My Way”: The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess by Joseph Horowitz, W.W. Norton & Company (2013) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Take off those commonfolk footwear and put on your dancing shoes - we're fulfilling our showbiz dreams with Crazy For You! Hop the train to the picturesque, lively, and completely barren Deadrock, Nevada in this jukebox musical where the Gershwins are on full display. As stockbrokers and cowboys showcase their musical comedy talents, our hosts give you the lowdown on the Great Performances catalogue, writing for adjectives, and how Gershwin music catches the heart. Tune in to next week's episode when we discuss In My Life; specifically, the Broadway production's performance from October 12th 2005! Contact us: unccpodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @unccpodcast Instagram: @unccpodcast

Van, former programmer, runs a Broadway record label in addition to producing Broadway shows. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our chat with Van Dean! If you are listening to this on Apple Podcast, we'd love it if you could share your love in a review! About Van Dean: Van Dean is a Tony® Award and Grammy® Award-winning producer of 13 Broadway musicals and plays (including Jagged Little Pill, Anastasia, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, Big Fish, Catch Me If You Can, Evita, The Best Man, The Velocity of Autumn), 260+ musical theater-related recordings (including Matilda, The Color Purple, Anastasia, My Fair Lady, If The Fates Allow: Hadestown Holiday Album, Caroline, or Change, Assassins, The Lightning Thief), as well as numerous Broadway/National Tours, Off-Broadway musicals, concert events, a West End production and a documentary film. Van is President and Co-Founder of Broadway Records and his philanthropic work includes being a producer of “Broadway For Orlando: What The World Needs Now is Love”, Broadway United's “We Are The World”, “Broadway Kids Against Bullying: I Have a Voice”, “From Broadway With Love” benefit concerts for Sandy Hook, Orlando (Emmy Award winner for sound design) and Parkland as well his work with NewArts in Sandy Hook/Newtown, CT. Resources from this episode: www.BroadwayRecords.com --- Come say hi to us! Facebook: @PageToStagePodcast @BroadwayPodcastNetwork Instagram: @PageToStagePodcast @TheMaryDina @BrianSedita @BroadwayPodcastNetwork Twitter: @TheMaryDina @BwayPodNetwork Youtube: @PageToStagePodcast @BroadwayPodcastNetwork #PageToStagePodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode one hundred and forty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys, and the creation of the Pet Sounds album. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Sunny" by Bobby Hebb. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode, most of which will be used in future Beach Boys episodes too. It's difficult to enumerate everything here, because I have been an active member of the Beach Boys fan community for twenty-four years, and have at times just used my accumulated knowledge for this. But the resources I list here are ones I've checked for specific things. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher.  His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. For material specific to Pet Sounds I have used Kingsley Abbot's The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds: The Greatest Album of the Twentieth Century and Charles L Granata's I Just Wasn't Made For These Times: Brian Wilson and the Making of Pet Sounds.  I also used the 126-page book The Making of Pet Sounds by David Leaf, which came as part of the The Pet Sounds Sessions box set, which also included the many alternate versions of songs from the album used here. Sadly both that box set and the 2016 updated reissue of it appear currently to be out of print, but either is well worth obtaining for anyone who is interested in how great records are made. Of the versions of Pet Sounds that are still in print, this double-CD version is the one I'd recommend. It has the original mono mix of the album, the more recent stereo remix, the instrumental backing tracks, and live versions of several songs. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it. The YouTube drum tutorial I excerpted a few seconds of to show a shuffle beat is here. Transcript We're still in the run of episodes that deal with the LA pop music scene -- though next week we're going to move away from LA, while still dealing with a lot of the people who would play a part in that scene. But today we're hitting something that requires a bit of explanation. Most artists covered in this podcast get one or at the most two episodes. Some get slightly more -- the major artists who are present for many revolutions in music, or who have particularly important careers, like Fats Domino or the Supremes. And then there are a few very major artists who get a lot more. The Beatles, for example, are going to get eight in total, plus there will be episodes on some of their solo careers. Elvis has had six, and will get one more wrap-up episode. This is the third Beach Boys episode, and there are going to be three more after this, because the Beach Boys were one of the most important acts of the decade. But normally, I limit major acts to one episode per calendar year of their career. This means that they will average at most one episode every ten episodes, so while for example the episodes on "Mystery Train" and "Heartbreak Hotel" came close together, there was then a reasonable gap before another Elvis episode. This is not possible for the Beach Boys, because this episode and the next two Beach Boys ones all take place over an incredibly compressed timeline. In May 1966, they released an album that has consistently been voted the best album ever in polls of critics, and which is certainly one of the most influential even if one does not believe there is such a thing as a "best album ever". In October 1966 they released one of the most important singles ever -- a record that is again often considered the single best pop single of all time, and which again was massively influential. And then in July 1967 they released the single that was intended to be the lead-off single from their album Smile, an album that didn't get released until decades later, and which became a legend of rock music that was arguably more influential by *not* being released than most records that are released manage to be. And these are all very different stories, stories that need to be told separately. This means that episode one hundred and forty-two, episode one hundred and forty-six, and episode one hundred and fifty-three are all going to be about the Beach Boys. There will be one final later episode about them, too, but the next few months are going to be very dominated by them, so I apologise in advance for that if that's not something you're interested in. Though it also means that with luck some of these episodes will be closer to the shorter length of podcast I prefer rather than the ninety-minute mammoths we've had recently. Though I'm afraid this is another long one. When we left the Beach Boys, we'd just heard that Glen Campbell had temporarily replaced Brian Wilson on the road, after Wilson's mental health had finally been unable to take the strain of touring while also being the group's record producer, principal songwriter, and leader. To thank Campbell, who at this point was not at all well known in his own right, though he was a respected session guitarist and had released a few singles, Brian had co-written and produced "Guess I'm Dumb" for him, a track which prefigured the musical style that Wilson was going to use for the next year or so: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "Guess I'm Dumb"] It's worth looking at "Guess I'm Dumb" in a little detail, as it points the way forward to a lot of Wilson's songwriting over the next year. Firstly, of course, there are the lyrical themes of insecurity and of what might even be descriptions of mental illness in the first verse -- "the way I act don't seem like me, I'm not on top like I used to be". The lyrics are by Russ Titelman, but it's reasonable to assume that as with many of his collaborations, Brian brought in the initial idea. There's also a noticeable change in the melodic style compared to Wilson's earlier melodies. Up to this point, Wilson has mostly been writing what get called "horizontal" melody lines -- ones with very little movement, and small movements, often centred on a single note or two. There are exceptions of course, and plenty of them, but a typical Brian Wilson melody up to this point is the kind of thing where even I can hit the notes more or less OK -- [sings] "Well, she got her daddy's car and she cruised through the hamburger stand now". It's not quite a monotone, but it's within a tight range, and you don't have to move far from one note to another. But "Guess I'm Dumb" is incorporating the influence of Roy Orbison, and more obviously of Burt Bacharach, and it's *ludicrously* vertical, with gigantic leaps all over the place, in places that are not obvious. It requires the kind of precision that only a singer like Campbell can attain, to make it sound at all natural: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "Guess I'm Dumb"] Bacharach's influence is also noticeable in the way that the chord changes are very different from those that Wilson was using before. Up to this point, when Wilson wrote unusual chord changes, it was mostly patterns like "The Warmth of the Sun", which is wildly inventive, but mostly uses very simple triads and sevenths. Now he was starting to do things like the line "I guess I'm dumb but I don't care", which is sort of a tumbling set of inversions of the same chord that goes from a triad with the fifth in the bass, to a major sixth, to a minor eleventh, to a minor seventh. Part of the reason that Brian could start using these more complex voicings was that he was also moving away from using just the standard guitar/bass/drums lineup, sometimes with keyboards and saxophone, which had been used on almost every Beach Boys track to this point. Instead, as well as the influence of Bacharach, Wilson was also being influenced by Jack Nitzsche's arrangements for Phil Spector's records, and in particular by the way Nitzsche would double instruments, and have, say, a harpsichord and a piano play the same line, to create a timbre that was different from either individual instrument. But where Nitzsche and Spector used the technique along with a lot of reverb and overdubbing to create a wall of sound which was oppressive and overwhelming, and which obliterated the sounds of the individual instruments, Wilson used the same instrumentalists, the Wrecking Crew, to create something far more delicate: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "Guess I'm Dumb (instrumental and backing vocals)"] Campbell does such a good job on "Guess I'm Dumb" that one has to wonder what would  have happened if he'd remained with the Beach Boys. But Campbell had of course not been able to join the group permanently -- he had his own career to attend to, and that would soon take off in a big way, though he would keep playing on the Beach Boys' records for a while yet as a member of the Wrecking Crew. But Brian Wilson was still not well enough to tour. In fact, as he explained to the rest of the group, he never intended to tour again -- and he wouldn't be a regular live performer for another twelve years. At first the group were terrified -- they thought he was talking about quitting the group, or the group splitting up altogether. But Brian had a different plan. From that point on, there were two subtly different lineups of the group. In the studio, Brian would sing his parts as always, but the group would get a permanent replacement for him on tour -- someone who could replace him on stage. While the group was on tour, Brian would use the time to write songs and to record backing tracks. He'd already started using the Wrecking Crew to add a bit of additional musical colour to some of the group's records, but from this point on, he'd use them to record the whole track, maybe getting Carl to add a bit of guitar as well if he happened to be around, but otherwise just using the group to provide vocals. It's important to note that this *was* a big change. A lot of general music history sources will say things like "the Beach Boys never played on their own records", and this is taken as fact by people who haven't investigated further. In fact, the basic tracks for all their early hits were performed by the group themselves -- "Surfin'", "Surfin' Safari", "409", "Surfer Girl", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Don't Worry Baby" and many more were entirely performed by the Beach Boys, while others like "I Get Around" featured the group with a couple of additional musicians augmenting them. The idea that the group never played on their records comes entirely from their recordings from 1965 and 66, and even there often Carl would overdub a guitar part. And at this point, the Beach Boys were still playing on the majority of their recordings, even on sophisticated-sounding records like "She Knows Me Too Well", which is entirely a group performance other than Brian's friend, Russ Titelman, the co-writer of "Guess I'm Dumb", adding some percussion by hitting a microphone stand with a screwdriver: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "She Knows Me Too Well"] So the plan to replace the group's instrumental performances in the studio was actually a bigger change than it might seem. But an even bigger change was the live performances, which of course required the group bringing in a permanent live replacement for Brian. They'd already tried this once before, when he'd quit the road for a while and they'd brought Al Jardine back in, but David Marks quitting had forced him back on stage. Now they needed someone to take his place for good. They phoned up their friend Bruce Johnston to see if he knew anyone, and after suggesting a couple of names that didn't work out, he volunteered his own services, and as of this recording he's spent more than fifty years in the band (he quit for a few years in the mid-seventies, but came back). We've seen Johnston turn up several times already, most notably in the episode on "LSD-25", where he was one of the musicians on the track we looked at, but for those of you who don't remember those episodes, he was pretty much *everywhere* in California music in the late fifties and early sixties. He had been in a band at school with Phil Spector and Sandy Nelson, and another band with Jan and Dean, and he'd played on Nelson's "Teen Beat", produced by Art Laboe: [Excerpt: Sandy Nelson, "Teen Beat"] He'd been in the house band at those shows Laboe put on at El Monte stadium we talked about a couple of episodes back, he'd been a witness to John Dolphin's murder, he'd been a record producer for Bob Keane, where he'd written and produced songs for Ron Holden, the man who had introduced "Louie Louie" to Seattle: [Excerpt: Ron Holden, "Gee But I'm Lonesome"] He'd written "The Tender Touch" for Richard Berry's backing group The Pharaos, with Berry singing backing vocals on this one: [Excerpt: The Pharaos, "The Tender Touch"] He'd helped Bob Keane compile Ritchie Valens' first posthumous album, he'd played on "LSD-25" and "Moon Dawg" by the Gamblers: [Excerpt: The Gamblers, "Moon Dawg"] He'd arranged and produced the top ten hit “Those Oldies but Goodies (Remind Me of You)” for Little Caesar and the Romans: [Excerpt Little Caesar and the Romans, "Those Oldies but Goodies (Remind Me of You)"] Basically, wherever you looked in the LA music scene in the early sixties, there was Bruce Johnston somewhere in the background. But in particular, he was suitable for the Beach Boys because he had a lot of experience in making music that sounded more than a little like theirs. He'd made cheap surf records as the Bruce Johnston Surfing Band: [Excerpt: Bruce Johnston, "The Hamptons"] And with his long-time friend and creative partner Terry Melcher he had, as well as working on several Paul Revere and the Raiders records, also recorded hit Beach Boys soundalikes both as their own duo, Bruce and Terry: [Excerpt: Bruce and Terry, "Summer Means Fun"] and under the name of a real group that Melcher had signed, but who don't seem to have sung much on their own big hit, the Rip Chords: [Excerpt: The Rip Chords, "Hey Little Cobra"] Johnston fit in well with the band, though he wasn't a bass player before joining, and had to be taught the parts by Carl and Al. But he's probably the technically strongest musician in the band, and while he would later switch to playing keyboards on stage, he was quickly able to get up to speed on the bass well enough to play the parts that were needed. He also wasn't quite as strong a falsetto singer as Brian Wilson, as can be heard by listening to this live recording of the group singing "I Get Around" in 1966: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Get Around (live 1966)"] Johnston is actually an excellent singer -- and can still hit the high notes today. He sings the extremely high falsetto part on "Fun Fun Fun" at the end of every Beach Boys show. But his falsetto was thinner than Wilson's, and he also has a distinctive voice which can be picked out from the blend in a way that none of the other Beach Boys' voices could -- the Wilson brothers and Mike Love all have a strong family resemblance, and Al Jardine always sounded spookily close to them. This meant that increasingly, the band would rearrange the vocal parts on stage, with Carl or Al taking the part that Brian had taken in the studio. Which meant that if, say, Al sang Brian's high part, Carl would have to move up to sing the part that Al had been singing, and then Bruce would slot in singing the part Carl had sung in the studio. This is a bigger difference than it sounds, and it meant that there was now a need for someone to work out live arrangements that were different from the arrangements on the records -- someone had to reassign the vocal parts, and also work out how to play songs that had been performed by maybe eighteen session musicians playing French horns and accordions and vibraphones with a standard rock-band lineup without it sounding too different from the record. Carl Wilson, still only eighteen when Brian retired from the road, stepped into that role, and would become the de facto musical director of the Beach Boys on stage for most of the next thirty years, to the point that many of the group's contracts for live performances at this point specified that the promoter was getting "Carl Wilson and four other musicians". This was a major change to the group's dynamics. Up to this point, they had been a group with a leader -- Brian -- and a frontman -- Mike, and three other members. Now they were a more democratic group on stage, and more of a dictatorship in the studio. This was, as you can imagine, not a stable situation, and was one that would not last long. But at first, this plan seemed to go very, very well. The first album to come out of this new hybrid way of working, The Beach Boys Today!, was started before Brian retired from touring, and some of the songs on it were still mostly or solely performed by the group, but as we heard with "She Knows Me Too Well" earlier, the music was still more sophisticated than on previous records, and this can be heard on songs like "When I Grow Up to Be a Man", where the only session musician is the harmonica player, with everything else played by the group: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "When I Grow Up to Be a Man"] But the newer sophistication really shows up on songs like "Kiss Me Baby", where most of the instrumentation is provided by the Wrecking Crew -- though Carl and Brian both play on the track -- and so there are saxophones, vibraphones, French horn, cor anglais, and multiple layers of twelve-string guitar: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Kiss Me Baby"] Today had several hit singles on it -- "Dance, Dance, Dance", "When I Grow Up to be a Man", and their cover version of Bobby Freeman's "Do You Wanna Dance?" all charted -- but the big hit song on the album actually didn't become a hit in that version. "Help Me Ronda" was a piece of album filler with a harmonica part played by Billy Lee Riley, and was one of Al Jardine's first lead vocals on a Beach Boys record -- he'd only previously sung lead on the song "Christmas Day" on their Christmas album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me Ronda"] While the song was only intended as album filler, other people saw the commercial potential in the song. Bruce Johnston was at this time still signed to Columbia records as an artist, and wasn't yet singing on Beach Boys records, and he recorded a version of the song with Terry Melcher as a potential single: [Excerpt: Bruce and Terry, "Help Me Rhonda"] But on seeing the reaction to the song, Brian decided to rerecord it as a single. Unfortunately, Murry Wilson turned up to the session. Murry had been fired as the group's manager by his sons the previous year, though he still owned the publishing company that published their songs. In the meantime, he'd decided to show his family who the real talent behind the group was by taking on another group of teenagers and managing and producing them. The Sunrays had a couple of minor hits, like "I Live for the Sun": [Excerpt: The Sunrays, "I Live for the Sun"] But nothing made the US top forty, and by this point it was clear, though not in the way that Murry hoped, who the real talent behind the group *actually* was. But he turned up to the recording session, with his wife in tow, and started trying to produce it: [Excerpt: Beach Boys and Murry Wilson "Help Me Rhonda" sessions] It ended up with Brian physically trying to move his drunk father away from the control panel in the studio, and having a heartbreaking conversation with him, where the twenty-two-year-old who is recovering from a nervous breakdown only a few months earlier sounds calmer, healthier, and more mature than his forty-seven-year-old father: [Excerpt: Beach Boys and Murry Wilson, "Help Me Rhonda" sessions] Knowing that this was the family dynamic helps make the comedy filler track on the next album, "I'm Bugged at My Old Man", seem rather less of a joke than it otherwise would: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I'm Bugged at My Old Man"] But with Murry out of the way, the group did eventually complete recording "Help Me Rhonda" (and for those of you reading this as a blog post rather than listening to the podcast, yes they did spell it two different ways for the two different versions), and it became the group's second number one hit: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me, Rhonda"] As well as Murry Wilson, though, another figure was in the control room then -- Loren Daro (who at the time went by his birth surname, but I'm going to refer to him throughout by the name he chose).  You can hear, on the recording, Brian Wilson asking Daro if he could "turn him on" -- slang that was at that point not widespread enough for Wilson's parents to understand the meaning. Daro was an agent working for the William Morris Agency, and he was part of a circle of young, hip, people who were taking drugs, investigating mysticism, and exploring new spiritual ideas. His circle included the Byrds -- Daro, like Roger McGuinn, later became a follower of Subud and changed his name as a result -- as well as people like the songwriter and keyboard player Van Dyke Parks, who will become a big part of this story in subsequent episodes, and Stephen Stills, who will also be turning up again. Daro had introduced Brian to cannabis, in 1964, and in early 1965 he gave Brian acid for the first time -- one hundred and twenty-five micrograms of pure Owsley LSD-25. Now, we're going to be looking at acid culture quite a lot in the next few months, as we get through 1966 and 1967, and I'll have a lot more to say about it, but what I will say is that even the biggest proponents of psychedelic drug use tend not to suggest that it is a good idea to give large doses of LSD in an uncontrolled setting to young men recovering from a nervous breakdown. Daro later described Wilson's experience as "ego death" -- a topic we will come to in a future episode, and not considered entirely negative -- and "a beautiful thing". But he has also talked about how Wilson was so terrified by his hallucinations that he ran into the bedroom, locked the door, and hid his head under a pillow for two hours, which doesn't sound so beautiful to me. Apparently after those two hours, he came out of the bedroom, said "Well, that's enough of that", and was back to normal. After that first trip, Wilson wrote a piece of music inspired by his psychedelic experience. A piece which starts like this, with an orchestral introduction very different from anything else the group had released as a single: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls"] Of course, when Mike Love added the lyrics to the song, it became about far more earthly and sensual concerns: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls"] But leaving the lyrics aside for a second, it's interesting to look at "California Girls" musically to see what Wilson's idea of psychedelic music -- by which I mean specifically music inspired by the use of psychedelic drugs, since at this point there was no codified genre known as psychedelic music or psychedelia -- actually was. So, first, Wilson has said repeatedly that the song was specifically inspired by "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Bach: [Excerpt: Bach, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"] And it's odd, because I see no real structural or musical resemblance between the two pieces that I can put my finger on, but at the same time I can totally see what he means. Normally at this point I'd say "this change here in this song relates to this change there in that song", but there's not much of that kind of thing here -- but I still. as soon as I read Wilson saying that for the first time, more than twenty years ago, thought "OK, that makes sense". There are a few similarities, though. Bach's piece is based around triplets, and they made Wilson think of a shuffle beat. If you remember *way* back in the second episode of the podcast, I talked about how one of the standard shuffle beats is to play triplets in four-four time. I'm going to excerpt a bit of recording from a YouTube drum tutorial (which I'll link in the liner notes) showing that kind of shuffle: [Excerpt: "3 Sweet Triplet Fills For Halftime Shuffles & Swung Grooves- Drum Lesson" , from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CwlSaQZLkY ] Now, while Bach's piece is in waltz time, I hope you can hear how the DA-da-da DA-da-da in Bach's piece may have made Wilson think of that kind of shuffle rhythm. Bach's piece also has a lot of emphasis of the first, fifth, and sixth notes of the scale -- which is fairly common, and not something particularly distinctive about the piece -- and those are the notes that make up the bass riff that Wilson introduces early in the song: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls (track)"] That bass riff, of course, is a famous one. Those of you who were listening to the very earliest episodes of the podcast might remember it from the intros to many, many, Ink Spots records: [Excerpt: The Ink Spots, "We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, and Me)"] But the association of that bassline to most people's ears would be Western music, particularly the kind of music that was in Western films in the thirties and forties. You hear something similar in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine", as performed by Laurel and Hardy in their 1937 film Way Out West: [Excerpt: Laurel and Hardy, "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine"] But it's most associated with the song "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", first recorded in 1934 by the Western group Sons of the Pioneers, but more famous in their 1946 rerecording, made after the Ink Spots' success, where the part becomes more prominent: [Excerpt: The Sons of the Pioneers, "Tumbling Tumbleweeds"] That song was a standard of the Western genre, and by 1965 had been covered by everyone from Gene Autry to the Supremes, Bob Wills to Johnnie Ray, and it would also end up covered by several musicians in the LA pop music scene over the next few years, including Michael Nesmith and Curt Boettcher, both people part of the same general scene as the Beach Boys. The other notable thing about "California Girls" is that it's one of the first times that Wilson was able to use multi-tracking to its full effect. The vocal parts were recorded on an eight-track machine, meaning that Wilson could triple-track both Mike Love's lead vocal and the group's backing vocals. With Johnston now in the group -- "California Girls" was his first recording session with them -- that meant that on the record there were eighteen voices singing, leading to some truly staggering harmonies: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls (Stack-O-Vocals)"] So, that's what the psychedelic experience meant to Brian Wilson, at least -- Bach, orchestral influences, using the recording studio to create thicker vocal harmony parts, and the old West. Keep that in the back of your mind for the present, but it'll be something to remember in eleven episodes' time. "California Girls" was, of course, another massive hit, reaching number three on the charts. And while some Beach Boys fans see the album it was included on, Summer Days... And Summer Nights!, as something of a step backward from the sophistication of Today!, this is a relative thing. It's very much of a part with the music on the earlier album, and has many wonderful moments, with songs like "Let Him Run Wild" among the group's very best. But it was their next studio album that would cement the group's artistic reputation, and which would regularly be acclaimed by polls of critics as the greatest album of all time -- a somewhat meaningless claim; even more than there is no "first" anything in music, there's no "best" anything. The impulse to make what became Pet Sounds came, as Wilson has always told the story, from hearing the Beatles album Rubber Soul. Now, we've not yet covered Rubber Soul -- we're going to look at that, and at the album that came after it, in three episodes' time -- but it is often regarded as a major artistic leap forward for the Beatles. The record Wilson heard, though, wasn't the same record that most people nowadays think of when they think of Rubber Soul. Since the mid-eighties, the CD versions of the Beatles albums have (with one exception, Magical Mystery Tour) followed the tracklistings of the original British albums, as the Beatles and George Martin intended. But in the sixties, Capitol Records were eager to make as much money out of the Beatles as they could. The Beatles' albums generally had fourteen songs on, and often didn't include their singles. Capitol thought that ten or twelve songs per album was plenty, and didn't have any aversion to putting singles on albums. They took the three British albums Help!, Rubber Soul, and Revolver, plus the non-album "Day Tripper"/"We Can Work It Out" single and Ken Thorne's orchestral score for the Help! film, and turned that into four American albums -- Help!, Rubber Soul, Yesterday and Today, and Revolver. In the case of Rubber Soul, that meant that they removed four tracks from the British album -- "Drive My Car", "Nowhere Man", "What Goes On" and "If I Needed Someone" -- and added two songs from the British version of Help!, "I've Just Seen a Face" and "It's Only Love". Now, I've seen some people claim that this made the American Rubber Soul more of a folk-rock album -- I may even have said that myself in the past -- but that's not really true. Indeed, "Nowhere Man" and "If I Needed Someone" are two of the Beatles' most overtly folk-rock tracks, and both clearly show the influence of the Byrds. But what it did do was remove several of the more electric songs from the album, and replace them with acoustic ones: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I've Just Seen a Face"] This, completely inadvertently, gave the American Rubber Soul lineup a greater sense of cohesion than the British one. Wilson later said "I listened to Rubber Soul, and I said, 'How could they possibly make an album where the songs all sound like they come from the same place?'" At other times he's described his shock at hearing "a whole album of only good songs" and similar phrases. Because up to this point, Wilson had always included filler tracks on albums, as pretty much everyone did in the early sixties. In the American pop music market, up to the mid sixties, albums were compilations of singles plus whatever random tracks happened to be lying around. And so for example in late 1963 the Beach Boys had released two albums less than a month apart -- Surfer Girl and Little Deuce Coupe. Given that Brian Wilson wrote or co-wrote all the group's original material, it wasn't all that surprising that Little Deuce Coupe had to include four songs that had been released on previous albums, including two that were on Surfer Girl from the previous month. It was the only way the group could keep up with the demand for new product from a company that had no concept of popular music as art. Other Beach Boys albums had included padding such as generic surf instrumentals, comedy sketches like "Cassius" Love vs. "Sonny" Wilson, and in the case of The Beach Boys Today!, a track titled "Bull Session With the Big Daddy", consisting of two minutes of random chatter with the photographer Earl Leaf while they all ate burgers: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys and Earl Leaf, "Bull Session With the Big Daddy"] This is not to attack the Beach Boys. This was a simple response to the commercial pressures of the marketplace. Between October 1962 and November 1965, they released eleven albums. That's about an album every three months, as well as a few non-album singles. And on top of that Brian had also been writing songs during that time for Jan & Dean, the Honeys, the Survivors and others, and had collaborated with Gary Usher and Roger Christian on songs for Muscle Beach Party, one of American International Pictures' series of Beach Party films. It's unsurprising that not everything produced on this industrial scale was a masterpiece. Indeed, the album the Beach Boys released directly before Pet Sounds could be argued to be an entire filler album. Many biographies say that Beach Boys Party! was recorded to buy Brian time to make Pet Sounds, but the timelines don't really match up on closer investigation. Beach Boys Party! was released in November 1965, before Brian ever heard Rubber Soul, which came out later, and before he started writing the material that became Pet Sounds. Beach Boys Party! was a solution to a simple problem -- the group were meant to deliver three albums that year, and they didn't have three albums worth of material. Some shows had been recorded for a possible live album, but they'd released a live album in 1964 and hadn't really changed their setlist very much in the interim. So instead, they made a live-in-the-studio album, with the conceit that it was recorded at a party the group were holding. Rather than the lush Wrecking Crew instrumentation they'd been using in recent months, everything was played on acoustic guitars, plus some bongos provided by Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine and some harmonica from Billy Hinsche of the boy band Dino, Desi, and Billy, whose sister Carl Wilson was shortly to marry. The album included jokes and false starts, and was overlaid with crowd noise, to give the impression that you were listening to an actual party where a few people were sitting round with guitars and having fun. The album consisted of songs that the group liked and could play without rehearsal -- novelty hits from a few years earlier like "Alley Oop" and "Hully Gully", a few Beatles songs, and old favourites like the Everly Brothers hit "Devoted to You" -- in a rather lovely version with two-part harmony by Mike and Brian, which sounds much better in a remixed version released later without the party-noise overdubs: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Devoted to You (remix)"] But the song that defined the album, which became a massive hit, and which became an albatross around the band's neck about which some of them would complain for a long time to come, didn't even have one of the Beach Boys singing lead. As we discussed back in the episode on "Surf City", by this point Jan and Dean were recording their album "Folk 'n' Roll", their attempt at jumping on the folk-rock bandwagon, which included the truly awful "The Universal Coward", a right-wing answer song  to "The Universal Soldier" released as a Jan Berry solo single: [Excerpt: Jan Berry, "The Universal Coward"] Dean Torrence was by this point getting sick of working with Berry, and was also deeply unimpressed with the album they were making, so he popped out of the studio for a while to go and visit his friends in the Beach Boys, who were recording nearby. He came in during the Party sessions, and everyone was suggesting songs to perform, and asked Dean to suggest something. He remembered an old doo-wop song that Jan and Dean had recorded a cover version of, and suggested that. The group had Dean sing lead, and ran through a sloppy version of it, where none of them could remember the words properly: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Barbara Ann"] And rather incredibly, that became one of the biggest hits the group ever had, making number two on the Billboard chart (and number one on other industry charts like Cashbox), number three in the UK, and becoming a song that the group had to perform at almost every live show they ever did, together or separately, for at least the next fifty-seven years. But meanwhile, Brian had been working on other material. He had not yet had his idea for an album made up entirely of good songs, but he had been experimenting in the studio. He'd worked on a handful of tracks which had pointed in new directions. One was a single, "The Little Girl I Once Knew": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "The Little Girl I Once Knew"] John Lennon gave that record a very favourable review, saying "This is the greatest! Turn it up, turn it right up. It's GOT to be a hit. It's the greatest record I've heard for weeks. It's fantastic." But the record only made number twenty -- a perfectly respectable chart placing, but nowhere near as good as the group's recent run of hits -- in part because its stop-start nature meant that the record had "dead air" -- moments of silence -- which made DJs avoid playing it, because they believed that dead air, even only a second of it here and there, would make people tune to another station. Another track that Brian had been working on was an old folk song suggested by Alan Jardine. Jardine had always been something of a folkie, of the Kingston Trio variety, and he had suggested that the group might record the old song "The Wreck of the John B", which the Kingston Trio had recorded. The Trio's version in turn had been inspired by the Weavers' version of the song from 1950: [Excerpt: The Weavers, "The Wreck of the John B"] Brian had at first not been impressed, but Jardine had fiddled with the chord sequence slightly, adding in a minor chord to make the song slightly more interesting, and Brian had agreed to record the track, though he left the instrumental without vocals for several months: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B (instrumental)"] The track was eventually finished and released as a single, and unlike "The Little Girl I Once Knew" it was a big enough hit that it was included on the next album, though several people have said it doesn't fit. Lyrically, it definitely doesn't, but musically, it's very much of a piece with the other songs on what became Pet Sounds: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B"] But while Wilson was able to create music by himself, he wasn't confident about his ability as a lyricist. Now, he's not a bad lyricist by any means -- he's written several extremely good lyrics by himself -- but Brian Wilson is not a particularly articulate or verbal person, and he wanted someone who could write lyrics as crafted as his music, but which would express the ideas he was trying to convey. He didn't think he could do it himself, and for whatever reason he didn't want to work with Mike Love, who had co-written the majority of his recent songs, or with any of his other collaborators. He did write one song with Terry Sachen, the Beach Boys' road manager at the time, which dealt obliquely with those acid-induced concepts of "ego death": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Hang on to Your Ego"] But while the group recorded that song, Mike Love objected vociferously to the lyrics. While Love did try cannabis a few times in the late sixties and early seventies, he's always been generally opposed to the use of illegal drugs, and certainly didn't want the group to be making records that promoted their use -- though I would personally argue that "Hang on to Your Ego" is at best deeply ambiguous about the prospect of ego death.  Love rewrote some of the lyrics, changing the title to "I Know There's an Answer", though as with all such bowdlerisation efforts he inadvertently left in some of the drug references: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Know There's an Answer"] But Wilson wasn't going to rely on Sachen for all the lyrics. Instead he turned to Tony Asher. Asher was an advertising executive, who Wilson probably met through Loren Daro -- there is some confusion over the timeline of their meeting, with some sources saying they'd first met in 1963 and that Asher had introduced Wilson to Daro, but others saying that the introductions went the other way, and that Daro introduced Asher to Wilson in 1965. But Asher and Daro had been friends for a long time, and so Wilson and Asher were definitely orbiting in the same circles. The most common version of the story seems to be that Asher was working in Western Studios, where he was recording a jingle - the advertising agency had him writing jingles because he was an amateur songwriter, and as he later put it nobody else at the agency knew the difference between E flat and A flat. Wilson was also working in the studio complex, and Wilson dragged Asher in to listen to some of the demos he was recording -- at that time Wilson was in the habit of inviting anyone who was around to listen to his works in progress. Asher chatted with him for a while, and thought nothing of it, until he got a phone call at work a few weeks later from Brian Wilson, suggesting the two write together. Wilson was impressed with Asher, who he thought of as very verbal and very intelligent, but Asher was less impressed with Wilson. He has softened his statements in recent decades, but in the early seventies he would describe Wilson as "a genius musician but an amateur human being", and sharply criticise his taste in films and literature, and his relationship with his wife. This attitude seems at least in part to have been shared by a lot of the people that Wilson was meeting and becoming influenced by. One of the things that is very noticeable about Wilson is that he has no filters at all, and that makes his music some of the most honest music ever recorded. But that same honesty also meant that he could never be cool or hip. He was -- and remains -- enthusiastic about the things he likes, and he likes things that speak to the person he is, not things that fit some idea of what the in crowd like. And the person Brian Wilson is is a man born in 1942, brought up in a middle-class suburban white family in California, and his tastes are the tastes one would expect from that background. And those tastes were not the tastes of the hipsters and scenesters who were starting to become part of his circle at the time. And so there's a thinly-veiled contempt in the way a lot of those people talked about Wilson, particularly in the late sixties and early seventies. Wilson, meanwhile, was desperate for their approval, and trying hard to fit in, but not quite managing it. Again, Asher has softened his statements more recently, and I don't want to sound too harsh about Asher -- both men were in their twenties, and still  trying to find their place in the world, and I wouldn't want to hold anyone's opinions from their twenties against them decades later. But that was the dynamic that existed between them. Asher saw himself as something of a sophisticate, and Wilson as something of a hick in contrast, but a hick who unlike him had created a string of massive hit records. And Asher did, always, respect Wilson's musical abilities. And Wilson in turn looked up to Asher, even while remaining the dominant partner, because he respected Asher's verbal facility. Asher took a two-week sabbatical from his job at the advertising agency, and during those two weeks, he and Wilson collaborated on eight songs that would make up the backbone of the album that would become Pet Sounds. The first song the two worked on was a track that had originally been titled "In My Childhood". Wilson had already recorded the backing track for this, including the sounds of bicycle horns and bells to evoke the feel of being a child: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "You Still Believe in Me (instrumental track)"] The two men wrote a new lyric for the song, based around a theme that appears in many of Wilson's songs -- the inadequate man who is loved by a woman who is infinitely superior to him, who doesn't understand why he's loved, but is astonished by it. The song became "You Still Believe in Me": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "You Still Believe in Me"] That song also featured an instrumental contribution of sorts by Asher. Even though the main backing track had been recorded before the two started working together, Wilson came up with an idea for an intro for the song, which would require a particular piano sound. To get that sound, Wilson held down the keys on a piano, while Asher leaned into the piano and plucked the strings manually. The result, with Wilson singing over the top, sounds utterly lovely: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "You Still Believe in Me"] Note that I said that Wilson and Asher came up with new lyrics together. There has been some slight dispute about the way songwriting credits were apportioned to the songs. Generally the credits said that Wilson wrote all the music, while Asher and Wilson wrote the lyrics together, so Asher got twenty-five percent of the songwriting royalties and Wilson seventy-five percent. Asher, though, has said that there are some songs for which he wrote the whole lyric by himself, and that he also made some contributions to the music on some songs -- though he has always said that the majority of the musical contribution was Wilson's, and that most of the time the general theme of the lyric, at least, was suggested by Wilson. For the most part, Asher hasn't had a problem with that credit split, but he has often seemed aggrieved -- and to my mind justifiably -- about the song "Wouldn't it Be Nice". Asher wrote the whole lyric for the song, though inspired by conversations with Wilson, but accepted his customary fifty percent of the lyrical credit. The result became one of the big hits from the album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wouldn't It Be Nice?"] But -- at least according to Mike Love, in the studio he added a single line to the song: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wouldn't it Be Nice?"] When Love sued Brian Wilson in 1994, over the credits to thirty-five songs, he included "Wouldn't it Be Nice" in the list because of that contribution. Love now gets a third of the songwriting royalties, taken proportionally from the other two writers. Which means that he gets a third of Wilson's share and a third of Asher's share. So Brian Wilson gets half the money, for writing all the music, Mike Love gets a third of the money, for writing "Good night baby, sleep tight baby", and Tony Asher gets a sixth of the money -- half as much as Love -- for writing all the rest of the lyric. Again, this is not any one individual doing anything wrong – most of the songs in the lawsuit were ones where Love wrote the entire lyric, or a substantial chunk of it, and because the lawsuit covered a lot of songs the same formula was applied to borderline cases like “Wouldn't it Be Nice” as it was to clearcut ones like “California Girls”, where nobody disputes Love's authorship of the whole lyric. It's just the result of a series of reasonable decisions, each one of which makes sense in isolation, but which has left Asher earning significantly less from one of the most successful songs he ever wrote in his career than he should have earned. The songs that Asher co-wrote with Wilson were all very much of a piece, both musically and lyrically. Pet Sounds really works as a whole album better than it does individual tracks, and while some of the claims made about it -- that it's a concept album, for example -- are clearly false, it does have a unity to it, with ideas coming back in different forms. For example, musically, almost every new song on the album contains a key change down a minor third at some point -- not the kind of thing where the listener consciously notices that an idea has been repeated, but definitely the kind of thing that makes a whole album hold together. It also differs from earlier Beach Boys albums in that the majority of the lead vocals are by Brian Wilson. Previously, Mike Love had been the dominant voice on Beach Boys records, with Brian as second lead and the other members taking few or none. Now Love only took two main lead vocals, and was the secondary lead on three more. Brian, on the other hand, took six primary lead vocals and two partial leads. The later claims by some people that this was a Brian Wilson solo album in all but name are exaggerations -- the group members did perform on almost all of the tracks -- but it is definitely much more of a personal, individual statement than the earlier albums had been. The epitome of this was "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times", which Asher wrote the lyrics for but which was definitely Brian's idea, rather than Asher's. [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"] That track also featured the first use on a Beach Boys record of the electro-theremin, an electronic instrument invented by session musician Paul Tanner, a former trombone player with the Glenn Miller band, who had created it to approximate the sound of a Theremin while being easier to play: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times"] That sound would turn up on future Beach Boys records... But the song that became the most lasting result of the Wilson/Asher collaboration was actually one that is nowhere near as personal as many of the other songs on the record, that didn't contain a lot of the musical hallmarks that unify the album, and that didn't have Brian Wilson singing lead. Of all the songs on the album, "God Only Knows" is the one that has the most of Tony Asher's fingerprints on it. Asher has spoken in the past about how when he and Wilson were writing, Asher's touchstones were old standards like "Stella By Starlight" and "How Deep is the Ocean?", and "God Only Knows" easily fits into that category. It's a crafted song rather than a deep personal expression, but the kind of craft that one would find in writers like the Gershwins, every note and syllable perfectly chosen: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"] One of the things that is often wrongly said about the song is that it's the first pop song to have the word "God" in the title. It isn't, and indeed it isn't even the first pop song to be called "God Only Knows", as there was a song of that name recorded by the doo-wop group the Capris in 1954: [Excerpt: The Capris, "God Only Knows"] But what's definitely true is that Wilson, even though he was interested in creating spiritual music, and was holding prayer sessions with his brother Carl before vocal takes, was reluctant to include the word in the song at first, fearing it would harm radio play. He was probably justified in his fears -- a couple of years earlier he'd produced a record called "Pray for Surf" by the Honeys, a girl-group featuring his wife: [Excerpt: The Honeys, "Pray For Surf"] That record hadn't been played on the radio, in part because it was considered to be trivialising religion. But Asher eventually persuaded Wilson that it would be OK, saying "What do you think we should do instead? Say 'heck only knows'?" Asher's lyric was far more ambiguous than it may seem -- while it's on one level a straightforward love song, Asher has always pointed out that the protagonist never says that he loves the object of the song, just that he'll make her *believe* that he loves her. Coupled with the second verse, which could easily be read as a threat of suicide if the object leaves the singer, it would be very, very, easy to make the song into something that sounds like it was from the point of view of a narcissistic, manipulative, abuser. That ambiguity is also there in the music, which never settles in a strong sense of key. The song starts out with an A chord, which you'd expect to lead to the song being in A, but when the horn comes in, you get a D# note, which isn't in that key, and then when the verse starts, it starts on an inversion of a D chord, before giving you enough clues that by the end of the verse you're fairly sure you're in the key of E, but it never really confirms that: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows (instrumental)"] So this is an unsettling, ambiguous, song in many ways. But that's not how it sounds, nor how Brian at least intended it to sound. So why doesn't it sound that way? In large part it's down to the choice of lead vocalist. If Mike Love had sung this song, it might have sounded almost aggressive. Brian *did* sing it in early attempts at the track, and he doesn't sound quite right either -- his vocal attitude is just... not right: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows (Brian Wilson vocal)"] But eventually Brian hit on getting his younger brother Carl to sing lead. At this point Carl had sung very few leads on record -- there has been some dispute about who sang what, exactly,  because of the family resemblance which meant all the core band members could sound a little like each other, but it's generally considered that he had sung full leads on two album tracks -- "Pom Pom Play Girl" and "Girl Don't Tell Me" -- and partial leads on two other tracks, covers of "Louie Louie" and "Summertime Blues". At this point he wasn't really thought of as anything other than a backing vocalist, but his soft, gentle, performance on "God Only Knows" is one of the great performances: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows (vocals)"] The track was actually one of those that required a great deal of work in the studio to create the form which now seems inevitable. Early attempts at the recording included a quite awful saxophone solo: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys "God Only Knows (early version)"] And there were a lot of problems with the middle until session keyboard player Don Randi suggested the staccato break that would eventually be used: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"] And similarly, the tag of the record was originally intended as a mass of harmony including all the Beach Boys, the Honeys, and Terry Melcher: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows (alternate version with a capella tag)"] Before Brian decided to strip it right back, and to have only three voices on the tag -- himself on the top and the bottom, and Bruce Johnston singing in the middle: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"] When Pet Sounds came out, it was less successful in the US than hoped -- it became the first of the group's albums not to go gold on its release, and it only made number ten on the album charts. By any objective standards, this is still a success, but it was less successful than the record label had hoped, and was taken as a worrying sign. In the UK, though, it was a different matter. Up to this point, the Beach Boys had not had much commercial success in the UK, but recently Andrew Loog Oldham had become a fan, and had become the UK publisher of their original songs, and was interested in giving them the same kind of promotion that he'd given Phil Spector's records. Keith Moon of the Who was also a massive fan, and the Beach Boys had recently taken on Derek Taylor, with his strong British connections, as their publicist. Not only that, but Bruce Johnston's old friend Kim Fowley was now based in London and making waves there. So in May, in advance of a planned UK tour set for November that year, Bruce Johnston and Derek Taylor flew over to the UK to press the flesh and schmooze. Of all the group members, Johnston was the perfect choice to do this -- he's by far the most polished of them in terms of social interaction, and he was also the one who, other than Brian, had the least ambiguous feelings about the group's new direction, being wholeheartedly in favour of it. Johnston and Taylor met up with Keith Moon, Lennon and McCartney, and other pop luminaries, and played them the record. McCartney in particular was so impressed by Pet Sounds and especially "God Only Knows", that he wrote this, inspired by the song, and recorded it even before Pet Sounds' UK release at the end of June: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Here, There, and Everywhere"] As a result of Johnston and Taylor's efforts, and the promotional work by Oldham and others, Pet Sounds reached number two on the UK album charts, and "God Only Knows" made number two on the singles charts. (In the US, it was the B-side to "Wouldn't it Be Nice", although it made the top forty on its own merits too). The Beach Boys displaced the Beatles in the readers' choice polls for best band in the NME in 1966, largely as a result of the album, and Melody Maker voted it joint best album of the year along with the Beatles' Revolver. The Beach Boys' commercial fortunes were slightly on the wane in the US, but they were becoming bigger than ever in the UK. But a big part of this was creating expectations around Brian Wilson in particular. Derek Taylor had picked up on a phrase that had been bandied around -- enough that Murry Wilson had used it to mock Brian in the awful "Help Me, Rhonda" sessions -- and was promoting it widely as a truism. Everyone was now agreed that Brian Wilson was a genius. And we'll see how that expectation plays out over the next few weeks.. [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Caroline, No"]

Norm Lewis is a talented singer, actor, and performer and possesses one of Broadway's best baritones. For his performance as Porgy in the Broadway production of THE GERSHWINS' PORGY AND BESS, he received Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League, and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations. Norm's many other theater credits include SIDE SHOW, THE LITTLE MERMAID, LES MISÉRABLES, CHICAGO, MISS SAIGON, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, SWEENY TODD, and most recently, CHICKEN AND BISCUITS. In May of 2014, he made history as THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA's first African American Phantom on Broadway. Join Norm as he shares memories of his Broadway career, working with Stephen Sondheim, and his work for social justice. Learn more about about the worthy causes discussed in this episodes and how you can donate and/or help: Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS The Actors Fund Black Theatre United Broadway Advocacy Coalition Black Theatre Coalition Midnight Run Connect with Norm: Website: NormLewis.com Facebook: @OfficialNormLewis Twitter: @normlewis777 Instagram: @thenormlewis Norm Lewis: (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays concert One Night Only: Norma Lewis Carnegie Hall concert with The New York Pops Connect with The Broadway Gives Back Podcast: Facebook: @broadwaygivesbackpodcast Instagram: @broadwaygivesbackpodcast Twitter: @broadwaygives Hosted & Executive Produced by Jan Svendsen and co-produced & edited by Jim Lochner. A proud member of the Broadway Podcast Network. Special thanks to Dori Berinstein, Alan Seales, and Kimberlee Garris from BPN; Julian Hills from The Bulldog Agency; and Eric Becker from Broderick Street Music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Synopsis In the summer of 1936, the songwriting team of George and Ira Gershwin settled their affairs in New York, put their furniture in storage, and flew off to Hollywood to fulfill a contract with the RKO Studios. The Gershwins were to supply music for a series of new movies, some starring an old friend of theirs, dancer Fred Astaire. In those days the big movie studios moved quickly, and so did the Gershwins. The first film in the contracted series, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as the romantic leads, was entitled “Shall We Dance” and was completed, scored and released in less than a year. On today's date in 1937, RKO Studios released their second Gershwin collaboration, “Damsel in Distress.” This starred Astaire and Joan Fontaine, and included two songs that would become Gershwin classics: “A Foggy Day in London Town” and “Nice Work if You Can Get It.” The release of “Damsel in Distress,” however, must have been a bittersweet event for the friends and family of George Gershwin: it proved to be the last major project Gershwin had completed before his untimely death on July 11 that same year following surgery to remove a brain tumor. Music Played in Today's Program George Gershwin (1898 – 1937) — Damsel in Distress Suite (An American in London) (Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; John Mauceri, cond.) Philips 434 274

A career Q&A with Audra McDonald, SAG Award Nominee for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. Moderated by Richard Ridge of BroadwayWorld.com's "Backstage with Richard Ridge." Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actress. Recipient of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award, she was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people of 2015. In addition to her Tony-winning performances in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill, she has appeared on Broadway in The Secret Garden, Marie Christine (Tony nomination), Henry IV,110 in the Shade (Tony nomination), and Shuffle Along, Or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed. The Juilliard-trained soprano's opera credits include La voix humaine and Send at Houston Grand Opera, and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Los Angeles Opera. On television, she was seen by millions as the Mother Abbess in NBC's The Sound of Music Live! and played Dr. Naomi Bennett on ABC's Private Practice. She won an Emmy Award for her role as host of PBS's Live From Lincoln Center and has received nominations for Wit, A Raisin in the Sun, and Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. On film, she recently appeared opposite Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash and plays the Garderobe in Disney's upcoming live-action Beauty and the Beast. An exclusive recording artist for Nonesuch Records, she has released five solo albums for the label. McDonald also maintains a major career as a concert artist, regularly appearing on the great stages of the world and with leading international orchestras. Of all her many roles, her favorites are the ones performed offstage: passionate advocate for equal rights and homeless youth, wife to actor Will Swenson, and mother to her growing family.

Welcome to a new edition of the Neon Jazz interview series with Veteran Jazz Pianist Andrew Burashko of the Canadaian Group Art of Time Ensemble .. He opened up with me about the band, their history, COVID and their 2021 CD Ain’t Got Long featuring vocalists Madeleine Peyroux, Gregory Hoskins, Jessica Mitchell and Sarah Slean as they cover songs from the likes of Radiohead, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon,  Robert Johnson, the Gershwins, Irving Berlin & More .. It’s a great story .. Enjoy .. Click here to listen.Neon Jazz is a radio program airing since 2011. Hosted by Joe Dimino and Engineered by John Christopher in Kansas City, Missouri giving listeners a journey into one of America's finest inventions. Listen to each show at https://www.mixcloud.com/neonjazzkc. Check us out at All About Jazz @ https://kansascity.jazznearyou.com/neon-jazz.php. For all things Neon Jazz, visit http://theneonjazz.blogspot.com/If you like what you hear, please let us know. You can contribute a few bucks to keep Neon Jazz going strong into the future. https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=ERA4C4TTVKLR4

I met the amazing Mr. Nathaniel Stampley in 2009 due to his also amazing wife being on faculty at my dance studio. InSpira.  This Brother is an actor that mesmerizes audiences with his talent whether he is on Broadway, Off Broadway,  Concerts, and TV. His Broadway credits include Cats, The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess, The Color Purple (Original & the Revival), & The Lion King. He discusses auditioning, his biggest influences and why it's vital to be your best self.  You will definitely be inspired. He's on instagram & Twitter @stampleyN & visit his website  www.nathanielstampley.com

Why We Should Expose Our Kids To Classical Music https://ourtownlive.net #herbw79George Gershwin (/ˈɡɜːrʃ.wɪn/; born Jacob Bruskin Gershowitz, September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs Swanee (1919) and Fascinating Rhythm (1924), the jazz standard I Got Rhythm (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935) which spawned the hit Summertime.Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him. He subsequently composed An American in Paris, returned to New York City and wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, it came to be considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century and an American cultural classic.Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores. He died in 1937 of a malignant brain tumor. His compositions have been adapted for use in film and television, with several becoming jazz standards recorded and covered in many variations.

Es dürften die fünf stressigsten Wochen seines Lebens gewesen sein. Aber sie waren gekrönt von einem Erfolg, der seinesgleichen sucht! Und Amerika bekam seine erste „amerikanische Sinfonie“.

Take a trip backstage with Broadway’s best – exclusive interviews with the leading creators of musical theatre. Based on the popular 1980s radio series produced and hosted by award-winning director and producer, Paul Lazarus, ANYTHING GOES is a celebration of storytelling through song, past, present and future. Now available in 30-minute segments. Hundreds of episodes featuring show-stopping interviews with composers, lyricists, book writers, directors and performing legends from the Broadway stage. A treasure trove of rare and famous songs performed by the original singers as well as the writers themselves. The series showcases interviews with living composers and lyricists like Stephen Sondheim, Gretchen Cryer and Stephen Schwartz, tributes to past greats like the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Comden & Green, Dorothy Parker and Ethel Merman as well as early encounters with now famous tunesmiths like Alan Menken, William Finn and Craig Carnelia. Anything Goes is everything Musical Theatre. Join Paul Lazarus as he explores the dazzling history of the musical stage.  Originally produced and broadcast in 1986. For more information go to AnythingGoesPL.com or BPN.FM/AnythingGoes. Theme music arranged by Bruce Coughlin. Sound mixing by David Rapkin. Associate producer Jeff Lunden. Anything Goes – Backstage with Broadway’s Best – is produced and hosted by Paul Lazarus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On episode 163 of The Quarantine Tapes, guest host Imani Perry is joined by Alicia Hall Moran for a two-part episode. Imani and Alicia have a fascinating and wide-reaching conversation about Alicia’s work as an artist and vocalist.Alicia pulls on varied threads of history and music in their discussion about art, family history, and collaboration. She tells Imani about her Black Wall Street project, discussing the project’s connections to her father and her family. Ranging from Carmen to Roots to figure skating, Imani and Alicia’s conversation is an incredible and insightful look at everything that surrounds the work of making art. Imani Perry is an intellectual, a professor, and a writer who was born in Birmingham, Alabama at the dawn of the Freedom movement. She lives the life of the mind through literature, criticism, music and art. Perry's hallmarks are passionate curiosity, rigorous contemplation, and dedication to the collective "we." Her children, Freeman and Issa Rabb, keep her honest and dreaming. Alicia Hall Moran, mezzo-soprano, is a multi-dimensional artist performing and composing between the genres of Opera, Art, Theater, and Jazz. Ms. Moran made her Broadway debut in the Tony-winning revival The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, starring as Bess on the celebrated 20-city American tour. "Moran finds the truth of the character in her magnificent voice," Los Angeles Times.A unique vocalist performing across the fine arts and in her own contemporary work, Ms. Moran's creativity has been nurtured by, and tapped by celebrated artists including Carrie Mae Weems, Adam Pendleton, Joan Jonas, Ragnar Kjartansson, Simone Leigh, Liz Magic Laser, curator Okwui Enwezor, and choreographer Bill T. Jones, musicians like Bill Frisell, Charles Lloyd, and the band Harriet Tubman, diverse writers from Simon Schama to Carl Hancock Rux, as well as institutions at the forefront of art and ideas worldwide.

There was a "Broadway Album"-sized hole in Alex and Daisha’s heart after ending the Barbra season last week, so they filled it. Join the Broadway Babies in a continuation of their already drawn-out season. Is this the actual conclusion to their Barbra season or will they keep making episodes about the rest of her 36 studio albums? Stay tuned and find out next week!!    Where to listen: YouTube | Spotify   Music by omg Sondheim, Rogers & Hammerstein, Bernstein, Frank Loesser, The Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Tim Rice, Benny Andersson, and  Björn Ulvaeus Distributed by Columbia    Show Notes: If you like the genre/style shifts in this, opera star Joyce DiDonato recently made an album doing this very same thing with musical theatre, opera, and art song.  Here's all the Barbra Archives stuff on the album!    Podcast cover art: David Taylor Twitter: @bwaybabies Facebook: Facebook.com/broadwaybabiespodcast

The Power of Yes with Entertainer Tony Russell “Do you know how talented you are?” — Tony Russell As an actor, Tony appeared in numerous films and television shows. As a comedian, he appeared on many of the talk shows, worked in Las Vegas, as well as many corporate gigs and performing arts centers. He's also a member of the acclaimed Actors Studio where he appeared in many stage productions.  Part One of ‘The Power of Yes with Entertainer Tony Russell’ Anthony Russell has parlayed an extensive talent for music into an acting career that includes stage, film and television productions. Tony’s parents were already into music before he got into the creative entertainment space. He was named after his father who often performed at wedding celebrations. He had memories of harmonizing old songs together with his family; that’s how involved they are into music.   As a child, Russell played harmonica, ukulele, guitar, trombone and piano. He worked his way through college playing and singing in a show band. After graduating Montclair State College with a major in trombone and a minor in piano, his band was booked as a Las Vegas lounge act in many of the major hotels. Russell even worked in the Atlantic City 500 Club where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first got together as a team.  “I was 63 years old when I got on the Bonnie Hunt show.” – Tony Russell Tony shares some of his tragic memories when he was young. The attack on Pearl Harbor happened, his father's brother, who was also his best friend, got killed in the war. It was back in 1941 when a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor took place in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. Part Two of ‘The Power of Yes with Entertainer Tony Russell’ Anthony (Tony) Russell originally from Newark, New Jersey, came to Hollywood in 1967 to pursue a career in show business. Tony is multi-faceted being an actor, stand-up comedian, singer, musician, composer and nightclub entertainer. He came into prominence as “Tony Russo'' on the ABC Television Network's hilarious sitcom, "Life with Bonnie" starring Bonnie Hunt.  “Do you have a vision that you want to emerge?” – Dianne A. Allen  Encouraged by his best friend who recognized his talents, Russell journeyed to New York to study acting at HB Studios and eventually earned a coveted membership in the acclaimed Actors Studio. He appeared in four of the group's stage productions, and was also in the cast of "Lamppost Reunion'' which won the best ensemble acting award at the Court Theater in Hollywood. Russell's other Theatrical appearances include, "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Guys & Dolls", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" & “Two Gentlemen of Verona". About Tony Russell Russell pursued stand-up comedy, and made appearances in many of the famed U.S. comedy clubs such as The Comedy Store, The Improv in Hollywood, The Ice House, and The Comedy Magic in Hermosa Beach. He also made comedic appearances on "The Merv Griffin Show", "The Dinah Shore Show", "Norm Crosby's Comedy Shop", "Madam's Place", "Make Me Laugh", and "The John Davidson Show" to name a few. He's opened for Las Vegas stars such as Frankie Avalon, Julie London, Roger Miller, Joe Williams, Tony Martins and Lou Rawls. Russell's film credits include "Bugsy" with Warren Beatty, "Casino" with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, "Ed Wood" with Johnny Depp and Martin Landau, "Out Of Justice" with Steven Segal, "Suddenly" with Kirstie Alley, "Living out Loud" with Holly Hunter and Danny De Vito, and "Winchell" with Stanley Tucci. On television, he was a recurring character on "The Fanelli Boys" and guest starred on "NYPD Blue", "Becker", "Home Improvement", "Mad About You", "Roseanne", "The George Carlin Show", "The Profiler", "Reba", "The John Larroquette Show", "Diagnosis Murder", "Silk Stalkings", "Night Court", "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch", "Family Law" and "Arliss." Russell continues to play piano everyday, loving the classic composers of American music, particularly The Gershwins, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, and Frank Leosser. Russell's also has a jazz band where he sings, plays, does stand-up and has wail of a time. Russell's other passions include watching old movies, walking with his beloved dog Angelo, learning old songs, and appreciating natural beauty. When time allows, he continues to work regularly at The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas as a stand-up comedian.   Tony says, ‘Throughout all my struggles my wife Rosemarie believed in my talent and never questioned what I was doing. She was always behind me 100%. Rosemarie is the love of my life.’   How to Connect with Dianne A. Allen   You have a vision inside to create something bigger than you. What you need are a community and a mentor. The 6-month Visionary Leader Program will move you forward. You will grow, transform and connect. http://bit.ly/DianneAAllen Join our Facebook Group Someone Gets Me Follow our Dianne’s Facebook Page: Dianne A. Allen Email contact: dianne@visionsapplied.com Dianne’s Mentoring Services: msdianneallen.com Website: www.visionsapplied.com Be sure to take a second and subscribe to the show and share it with anyone you think will benefit. Until next time, remember the world needs your special gift, so let your light shine!

This weeks episode hits way too close to home, when a fictional president, after losing reelection, uses his followers to perpetrate a fascist coup. How did the Gershwins know? Are they time travelers? Find out this week on Flop of the Heap.Let 'Em Eat Cake- Imperial Theatre- 1933Music- George GershwinLyrics- Ira GershwinBook- George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind

Career Q&A with Norm Lewis on November 20, 2013. Moderated by Richard Ridge, Broadway World. Norm Lewis can be seen in A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair, a celebration of songs of Stephen Sondheim presented by City Center Encores! and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Norm was last seen as Senator Edison Davis on the hit ABC drama, "Scandal." He recently received Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations for his performance as Porgy in the Broadway production of The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. His many Broadway credits include Sondheim on Sondheim, The Little Mermaid, Les Miserables (Drama League nomination), Chicago, Amour, The Wild Party, Side Show, Miss Saigon and The Who's Tommy. He starred in the West End/London productions of Les Miserables and the Les Miserables 25th Anniversary Concert (London's O2 Arena, PBS), and Off-Broadway in The Tempest (Public Theater), Ragtime with the New York Philharmonic, Dessa Rose (Drama Desk nomination, AUDELCO Award), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Drama League nomination), Captains Courageous, and A New Brain. www.normlewis.com

According to Rabbi Weiss, Broadway musicals are the most Jewish art form in America, with countless composers, lyricists, producers, directors, actors, and actresses from the Jewish faith. Join us as Rabbi Weiss takes us on a journey through the music and lives of those Jewish people, from the Gershwins to Sondheim, who built and shaped the world of American musical theater!

Philip tour's Aaron Burr, Jared Dixon sits down to talk about what it was like to join the cast just months before shows were halted, explains why waiting for it worked in his favor, and reflects on some of his craziest full circle moments.   Make Them Hear You  The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess: New Broadway Cast Recording Nik Walker on The Hamilcast  Jared Dixon on Instagram Panda McDixon on Instagram Gillian on Twitter Gillian on Instagram The Hamilcast on Twitter The Hamilcast on Instagram Join the Patreon Peeps

Jeannie Tanner is a singer-songwriter and trumpeter who performs and records her original music - a mix of jazz, pop, R&B and Latin rhythms. She has earned six ASCAP Composer Awards and has seven Grammy-considered albums. Her album WORDS & MUSIC was named by the Chicago Tribune as one of the Best of 2017 (top 10).  “I’m reminded of what we call standards," explained Jason Marck of NPR in describing Tanner's writing style. "That’s not just Tin Pan Alley with your Gershwins, Porter, your Rodgers and Hart; I also hear Brill Building influences like Mann & Weil, King & Goffin and Bacharach & David…”   Ms. Tanner’s songs have been featured in many television shows and movies including “Culinary Travels with Dave Eckert” (PBS/The Travel Channel), “Revenge” (ABC), “Single Ladies” (VH1 - produced by Queen Latifah) “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” (Bravo), “Young and the Restless” (CBS) and many Hallmark holiday movies including “Christmas Cookies” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered for Christmas.” She is proud to be signed to Heavy Hitters Music in L.A. And, her music can be heard on local, national and international radio via traditional stations, Sirius XM and on the internet where she has her own Pandora station.    Tanner has performed in the Chicago area for 15 years, doing public and private gigs 5-7 nights a week at venues including headlining at Andy's Jazz Club, Winter's Jazz Club, the Skokie Theatre and Davenport's Piano Bar. She plays solo, duo, trio and with her quartet - depending on the needs of the club owners/clients. These days, Tanner is composing, recording in her home studio and working on new projects with Abigail Riccards - including their weekly Facebook Live-streams together. They've been doing their DESPERATE MEASURES MUSIC SERIES: 2 Voices/2 Pianos since mid-March. Tanner has been excited to blend her voice with Abby's every week singing harmonies, playing piano, some trumpet and a little percussion. Abby & Jeannie have a great time - just two friends making music, sharing laughs and telling stories about their lives.   Chicago musician Abigail Riccards has made an international name for herself in the jazz and pop music community for nearly 20 years. After launching her career in New York City in 2002 at storied clubs like Birdland, the Jazz Standard, Smalls, and the Kitano, she continued to garner praise as a selected semifinalist in the 2004 Thelonius Monk International Jazz Competition.    After nearly a decade on the east coast, Riccards broadened her scope to the iconic Chicago jazz scene, where she frequently headlines legendary clubs such as the Green Mill, the Jazz Showcase and Winter’s Jazz Club. After releasing her 3rd studio album in 2013, she performed on the main stage at the Chicago Jazz Festival with Matt Wilson’s Honey and Salt tour. She has also collaborated with artists such as Jane Monheit, Peter Bernstein, Joel Frahm and Mulgrew Miller.     Her live engagements have been met with generous praise from top critics. The Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich referred to her as “a breath of fresh air...possessing a textured but radiant quality” and Christopher Loudon from JazzTimes said “Abigail Riccards has mastered the increasingly dangerous art of making less, more. Think Doris Day with Anita O'Day jazz smarts."

Travel is also a state of mind. Great songs from Newsies, As Thousands Cheer, Guys and Dolls, and written by the Gershwins, Frank Loesser, Rodgers and Hart and more conjure up our nostalgia for wanderlust.

During the 1930s Broadway was severely impacted by the economic disaster of the "Great Depression". However, somehow out of all that hardship and struggle came an extraordinary period of artistic achievement and spectacular continuing development for the Broadway Musical. The inventors of these shows included several new and defining masters of the musical, as well as many of the bright lights of the 1920’s, who now achieved their full wattage in the 1930’s. Among these were Dietz & Schwartz., Lindsay & Crouse, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, The Gershwins, and George "Mr" Abbott. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A spotlight on the songs--all tunes originally from Broadway--performed by America's greatest song-and-dance man.  Fred Astaire takes a tuneful spin through the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Schwartz and Dietz and more.

That effervescent jazz singer, Carmen McRae, celebrates her centenary this week--we think. Listen to an hour of Carmen gracing the songs of the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Noel Coward, Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and more with her unique style.

The most famous American opera opens with one of the most famous American songs: “Summertime.” The Gershwins’ haunting lullaby from Porgy and Bess is a simple tune with a complex story. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore not just the lyrics and music, but how Porgy and Bess came into being and the way it draws on the culture of the Gullah Geechee, descendants of formerly enslaved people living in and around South Carolina. Decoding two arias – "Summertime" and "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'" – the show finds uncomfortable contradictions as well as uncanny parallels between the real lives of the Gullah people and the characters onstage.  The Guests Soprano Golda Schultz debuted as Clara at the Met earlier this year, her first time singing in the U.S. with a cast full of people of color. She believes that when telling stories from underrepresented groups, they must be told from places of joy and not only areas of pain.  Naomi André knows better than most about the complicated racial history of Porgy and Bess. Still, the University of Michigan professor and author of Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement believes the show can be timely, relevant and moving. Victoria Smalls is a Gullah woman who grew up on St. Helena Island off Charleston, South Carolina. She works as the Director of Art, History, and Culture at the Penn Center in South Carolina, an institution dedicated to promoting and preserving African American history and culture. She's also a federal commissioner for the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor. Bass-baritone Eric Owens was initially reluctant to start singing Porgy, since so many African American singers have a hard time breaking out of that role. But even while reckoning with some of the controversial aspects of the Gershwins' opera, he has now sung the role for a decade and believes it is some of the most beautiful music written in the 20th century. 

Det är den 12 februari 1924 och det är konsert på Aeolian Hall på 43:e gatan i New York. Ett nytt kapitel i musikhistorien, säger en besökare efteråt. Rhapsody in Blue hörs för första gången. På konserten är det knökfullt och på plats finns musikaliska mästare som Rachmaninoff, Kreisler, Stokowski, Heifetz - vissa tycker sig se Stravinskij i publiken.Konserten heter An experiment in Modern Music. Det är en lång och omfattande konsert - och efter 33 nummer, när alla är som tröttast, med en ventilation som är trasig och musik som låtit rätt enahanda, sätter sig den 26-årige sångskrivaren och musikalkompositören George Gershwin vid pianot. Han ska spela det näst sista stycket på programmet. Bandledaren Paul Whiteman höjer taktpinnen - Palais Royale Orchestra är beredda. Rhapsody in Blue hörs för första gången.Den här dagen, för runt ett sekel sedan, klev jazzen definitivt in på den klassiska musikens område. Eller om det var tvärtom...För oss, nu, känns jazzharmonier i klassisk musik naturliga. Men då var det annorlunda vilket man faktiskt kan höra när Rhapsody in Blue drygt tio år senare arrangerades om för en symfoniorkester. Om vi lyssnar på en av de inspelningar som genom åren varit den mest spelade, där Erich Kunzel leder Cincinnatis symfoniorkester, hör vi att allt blivit rakare, stramare och inte så många glidningar i tempo och frasering.Men då Gershwin och Whiteman själv framför Rhapsody in Blue hör vi redan under den här första minuten hur det drygt två-oktavsstora glissandot, tar ut svängarna mer, hur klarinetten nästan skrattar åt sig själv och sitt läte, hur rytmen helt enkelt har flera och kraftiga jazziga betoningar. Accenterna är tydligare.George Gershwin och Paul Whiteman hörs i inslaget i en inspelning från 1927. Den där speciella, nästan gnäggande inledningen där på 20-talet kom fram under repetitionerna då Whitemans klarinettist Ross Gorman skojade lite och Gershwin hakade på direkt. Gör så där på konserten också, sa han, "waila" så mycket som du kan.Rhapsody in Blue blev en succé direkt. Under de tre första åren mellan 1924 och 1927 hade Whitemans band spelat den 84 gånger och sålt en miljon plattor.Men vägen dit var lite krokig. Gershwin och Whiteman hade faktiskt talat om en jazzkonsert under flera år, men när plötsligt en konkurrent också skulle ha en stor jazzklassisk-konsert där i New York satte arbetet i gång på allvar.Så runt jul, med bara fem veckor kvar, satt Gershwin på ett tåg till Boston och, som han sa, hörde musik i alla stökiga ljud. Rytmerna från stålet, hjulen mot rälsen, och vagnarnas krängande blev till ett musikaliskt kalejdoskop. "Plötsligt såg jag hur jag skulle konstruera allt och en massa idéer som jag redan hade kunde smältas samman och då skildra nationen Amerikas självkänsla och vårt galna storstadstemperament. När jag kom fram till Boston hade jag en struktur på stycket."Gershwin själv talade mycket om just Amerikas själ, men många gånger nämner man Rhapsody in Blue som ett porträtt av New York.Det finns hela fem grundversioner och det som skiljer dem åt är till exempel om det är med jazzorkester eller symfoniorkester. Samtliga versioner finns i flera olika inspelningar - några svårfångade, andra snabbt tillgängliga.Trots klarinetten i början är det ju ändå ett verk för piano och orkester.Namnet Rhapsody in Blue berodde just på att man var tvungen att skriva musiken snabbt. En konsert för piano och orkester skapar förväntningar på ett flersatsigt verk där olika teman jobbar mot och med varandra. Men en rapsodi behöver inte stöpas i en välkänd form. Det ger kompositören möjlighet att leka mera med formen och lägga in fler improvisationer och arbeta mera med starka kontraster.I Rhapsody in Blue finns just en lösare struktur där solopartier snabbt övergår i breda symfoniska delar.Rytmerna är sen en underbar blandning av jazz från alla håll. Kubanskt, charleston, ragtime och sedan sångbara delar som kunde vara både från opera och populära visor. Tio år senare skrev Gershwin operan Porgy and Bess. Där hade blandningen förfinats ytterligare.Vad Rhapsody in Blue har bevisat, bland mycket annat, är att det populära och det seriösa kunde förenas. Och det blev tydligt att konstmusiken kunde hämta inspiration från jazzen och inte bara från folkmusiken som tidigare. Förut hade jazzen och den klassiska musiken i princip bara hälsat på hos varandra och artigt konverserat.Men Gershwins musik gjorde mer än så. Han smälte samman sätten att spela i en enda klang.Konsertrubriken då, den 12 februari 1924, var "Ett experiment inom modern musik". Nu är experimentet en klassiker.Per Feltzin per.feltzin@sverigesradio.seMusiken i inslaget är främst från de två inspelningarna gjorda 1924 och 1927 plus den med Erich Kunzel och Cincinnatis symfoniorkester.

A sampling of the great songs that Broadway composers wrote just for Hollywood pictures: Tinseltown tunes by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Kander and Ebb, Sondheim and more.

Michael Lohse über Gershwins epochale "Rhapsody in Blue", die der junge Komponist 1924 unter größtem Zeitdruck schrieb. Kritiker rümpften damals die Nase über Gershwins Synthese aus Jazz und klassischer Sinfonik, heute sind die Melodien weltberühmt.

This week we chat with James Kehoe about which of life's truths can be gleaned from Crazy For You!In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, "When future historians try to find the exact moment at which Broadway finally rose up to grab the musical back from the British, they just may conclude that the revolution began last night. The shot was fired at the Shubert Theater, where a riotously entertaining show called Crazy for You uncorked the American musical’s classic blend of music, laughter, dancing, sentiment and showmanship with a freshness and confidence rarely seen during the Cats decade . . . Crazy for You scrapes away decades of cabaret and jazz and variety-show interpretations to reclaim the Gershwins’ standards, in all their glorious youth, for the dynamism of the stage."- FURTHER READING -Wiki - Musical, Ira Gershwin, George Gershwin, Girl CrazyiTunesSpotifyLike us on Facebook! Follow us on Twitter! Support us on Patreon!Email us: musicalstaughtmepodcast@gmail.comVisit our home on the web thatsnotcanonproductions.comOur theme song and interstitial music all by the one and only Benedict Braxton Smith. Find out more about him at www.benedictbraxtonsmith.com

Were The Beatles jazz artists?  Of course not!  But then neither were The Gershwins, or Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers & Hammerstein, etc. who wrote those great tunes that have become ‘jazz standards’. Jazz musicians have quite enjoyed adapting many of those Beatles songs to jazz….re-harmonizing them, changing rhythms, or adding new textures.    In this…Continue reading Episode 19, Jazz Beatles Part 1

I'd rather be right in the middle of the 1930s than any other decade in musical theater history: eternal songs by the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Rodgers and Hart, performed by Ethel Merman, Bert Lahr, Paul Whiteman and many others.

A Fred Astaire/Joan Fontaine film that is really starring George Burns & Gracie Allen! Oh yeah, and music by the Gershwins and a script by P.G. Wodehouse...

A Fred Astaire/Joan Fontaine film that is really starring George Burns & Gracie Allen! Oh yeah, and music by the Gershwins and a script by P.G. Wodehouse...

Det är den 12 februari 1924 och det är konsert på Aeolian Hall på 43:e gatan i New York. Ett nytt kapitel i musikhistorien, säger en besökare efteråt. Rhapsody in Blue hörs för första gången. På konserten är det knökfullt och på plats finns musikaliska mästare som Rachmaninoff, Kreisler, Stokowski, Heifetz - vissa tycker sig se Stravinskij i publiken.Konserten heter An experiment in Modern Music. Det är en lång och omfattande konsert - och efter 33 nummer, när alla är som tröttast, med en ventilation som är trasig och musik som låtit rätt enahanda, sätter sig den 26-årige sångskrivaren och musikalkompositören George Gershwin vid pianot. Han ska spela det näst sista stycket på programmet. Bandledaren Paul Whiteman höjer taktpinnen - Palais Royale Orchestra är beredda. Rhapsody in Blue hörs för första gången.Den här dagen, för runt ett sekel sedan, klev jazzen definitivt in på den klassiska musikens område. Eller om det var tvärtom...För oss, nu, känns jazzharmonier i klassisk musik naturliga. Men då var det annorlunda vilket man faktiskt kan höra när Rhapsody in Blue drygt tio år senare arrangerades om för en symfoniorkester. Om vi lyssnar på en av de inspelningar som genom åren varit den mest spelade, där Erich Kunzel leder Cincinnatis symfoniorkester, hör vi att allt blivit rakare, stramare och inte så många glidningar i tempo och frasering.Men då Gershwin och Whiteman själv framför Rhapsody in Blue hör vi redan under den här första minuten hur det drygt två-oktavsstora glissandot, tar ut svängarna mer, hur klarinetten nästan skrattar åt sig själv och sitt läte, hur rytmen helt enkelt har flera och kraftiga jazziga betoningar. Accenterna är tydligare.George Gershwin och Paul Whiteman hörs i inslaget i en inspelning från 1927. Den där speciella, nästan gnäggande inledningen där på 20-talet kom fram under repetitionerna då Whitemans klarinettist Ross Gorman skojade lite och Gershwin hakade på direkt. Gör så där på konserten också, sa han, "waila" så mycket som du kan.Rhapsody in Blue blev en succé direkt. Under de tre första åren mellan 1924 och 1927 hade Whitemans band spelat den 84 gånger och sålt en miljon plattor.Men vägen dit var lite krokig. Gershwin och Whiteman hade faktiskt talat om en jazzkonsert under flera år, men när plötsligt en konkurrent också skulle ha en stor jazzklassisk-konsert där i New York satte arbetet i gång på allvar.Så runt jul, med bara fem veckor kvar, satt Gershwin på ett tåg till Boston och, som han sa, hörde musik i alla stökiga ljud. Rytmerna från stålet, hjulen mot rälsen, och vagnarnas krängande blev till ett musikaliskt kalejdoskop. "Plötsligt såg jag hur jag skulle konstruera allt och en massa idéer som jag redan hade kunde smältas samman och då skildra nationen Amerikas självkänsla och vårt galna storstadstemperament. När jag kom fram till Boston hade jag en struktur på stycket."Gershwin själv talade mycket om just Amerikas själ, men många gånger nämner man Rhapsody in Blue som ett porträtt av New York.Det finns hela fem grundversioner och det som skiljer dem åt är till exempel om det är med jazzorkester eller symfoniorkester. Samtliga versioner finns i flera olika inspelningar - några svårfångade, andra snabbt tillgängliga.Trots klarinetten i början är det ju ändå ett verk för piano och orkester.Namnet Rhapsody in Blue berodde just på att man var tvungen att skriva musiken snabbt. En konsert för piano och orkester skapar förväntningar på ett flersatsigt verk där olika teman jobbar mot och med varandra. Men en rapsodi behöver inte stöpas i en välkänd form. Det ger kompositören möjlighet att leka mera med formen och lägga in fler improvisationer och arbeta mera med starka kontraster.I Rhapsody in Blue finns just en lösare struktur där solopartier snabbt övergår i breda symfoniska delar.Rytmerna är sen en underbar blandning av jazz från alla håll. Kubanskt, charleston, ragtime och sedan sångbara delar som kunde vara både från opera och populära visor. Tio år senare skrev Gershwin operan Porgy and Bess. Där hade blandningen förfinats ytterligare.Vad Rhapsody in Blue har bevisat, bland mycket annat, är att det populära och det seriösa kunde förenas. Och det blev tydligt att konstmusiken kunde hämta inspiration från jazzen och inte bara från folkmusiken som tidigare. Förut hade jazzen och den klassiska musiken i princip bara hälsat på hos varandra och artigt konverserat.Men Gershwins musik gjorde mer än så. Han smälte samman sätten att spela i en enda klang.Konsertrubriken då, den 12 februari 1924, var "Ett experiment inom modern musik". Nu är experimentet en klassiker.Per Feltzin per.feltzin@sverigesradio.seMusiken i inslaget är främst från de två inspelningarna gjorda 1924 och 1927 plus den med Erich Kunzel och Cincinnatis symfoniorkester.

October 3 is the big date for the gala where Steve & Eydie, Chita Rivera and The Gershwins will be inducted into the Songbook Hall of Fame in Carmel, and there are also plenty of places within The Palladium to have a blast long after the show is over, as my pal Mr. Feinstein tells us.

We welcome Robert Kimball, author of “The Gershwins,” and musical arranger Rob Fisher who discuss “An American in Paris,” now adapted to the Broadway stage. Next up, we pay tribute to Jean-Claude Baker, son of the legendary icon Josephine Baker.