Oh, Lady Be Good!
Oh, Lady Be Good! is a song by George Gershwin (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) from 1924. It was written for the Broadway musical Lady, Be Good .
The song
The song is almost entirely in G major and laid out in the AABA form. It's actually a ballad . The song has a very sparing theme with sixteen notes in the A section, where musically only a falling triplet figure in measure 3 (dhg) and in measure 5 (cda), which led to a long d an octave lower, is noticeable. The words “Lady be good” (and later “misunderstood” or “babe in the wood”) were placed on this triplet.
Impact history
The original title of the musical was Black-Eyed Susan , but when playwrights Guy Bolton and Fred Thompson first heard the song, they decided to name the musical Lady, Be Good . In the musical, Fred and Adele Astaire played the main roles. The song Oh, Lady Be Good! In the first production, the comedy actor Walter Catlett sang for 330 performances, beginning with the world premiere on December 1, 1924 .
In 1925 the song hit the charts three times, two of them in an instrumental version:
- Paul Whiteman Orchestra (Instrumental, # 2)
- Carl Fenton and his Orchestra (Instrumental, # 9)
- Cliff Edwards (# 13)
Later the song became a jazz standard ; it was interpreted at least at a medium-fast pace: Coleman Hawkins had it in his repertoire as early as 1934 on his first European tour. Saxophonist Lester Young played one of his most famous solos in this song with Count Basie's orchestra in 1936 . Other versions have been made by Alice Babs , Benny Goodman , Glenn Miller , Django Reinhardt , Slim & Slam , Art Tatum , the Kansas City Five , Teddy Wilson , Lionel Hampton , Sidney Bechet , Fats Navarro / Tadd Dameron , Joe Pass , Zoot Sims , Earl Wild and Snooky Young played. The Ernst Höllerhagen Quartet recorded a version in Zurich in 1945; In Germany, the title was played at the first German Jazz Festival in 1953 by a big band. a. Fred Bunge , Max Greger , Paul Kuhn and Hans Last belonged.
The song is particularly associated with the singer Ella Fitzgerald . Fitzgerald recorded the song several times; her 1947 recording with Bob Haggart's orchestra is best known for Fitzgerald's scat solo. The song became a popular jam session piece and was performed repeatedly at the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts in particular . Dizzy Gillespie also used the piece as a comical number for singer Joe Carroll . Dee Dee Bridgewater interpreted it in reference to Ella Fitzgerald.
The song was also starred in the 1941 film Lady Be Good (1941, directed by Norman Z. McLeod ).
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Jeremy Wilson: Oh, Lady Be Good! . JazzStandards.com. (Engl.)
- ^ Robert Wyatt and John Andrew Johnson: The George Gershwin Reader . Oxford University Press US, 2004. ISBN 0195130197 . P. 67 (Engl.)
- ^ Gunther Schuller: The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 . Oxford University Press US, 1991. ISBN 0195071409 . P. 230 (Engl.)
- ^ Dave Oliphant: Texan Jazz . University of Texas Press, 1996. ISBN 0292760450 . Pp. 118-119. (Engl.)
- ^ William Hyland: George Gershwin: A New Biography . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003. ISBN 0275981118 . P. 97 (Engl.)