The Man I Love
The Man I Love is a ballad written by George Gershwin (music) and Ira Gershwin (text) and published in 1924.
Origin and early impact history
The Gershwin brothers originally wrote the song for the satirical musical Lady, Be Good ; Adele Adair introduced him to the first test performances in Philadelphia. Since the ballad was not well received by the audience, it was postponed in the first act. In the first week, the song was taken out of the show, but released as a single piece of music with the New World Music Corporation. In 1927 he was inducted into the antiwar satire Strike Up the Band , this time under the title The Girl I Love , sung by the tenor Morton Downey; the musical flopped and was only played for two weeks. Another time was The Man I Love use in a show, the Ziegfeld production Rosalie (1928), the lack of success, although never the New York Broadway reached, but the basis for the musical film The Man I Love was (1947), with Ida Lupino and Bruce Bennett in the lead roles.
The Man I Love was also the theme tune for George Gershwin's weekly CBS radio show Music by Gershwin , which aired in 1934/35, and was also his personal favorite among all of his compositions.
Song structure
The Man I Love , written in G major, is written in the song form AA'BA '; the melody is an offshoot of the Rhapsody in Blue , which was created in the same year. “The essence of the song are of course the blue notes .” In the very first version (still without the text) the melody of today's chorus was the melody of the verse .
First recordings
One of the first musicians to record the song was Sippie Wallace (Okeh, 1925). Further interpretations come from Sam Lanin (Okeh, 1927), Annette Hanshaw ( Pathé , 1928), Ben Bernie (Brunswick, 1928) and Paul Whiteman (Columbia, 1928), in Berlin by Julian Fuhs 1928. Edwina Ashley , a friend of George Gershwin and the later Lady Mountbatten, brought the song to England, which made it very popular in Great Britain and France in the mid-1920s (including recordings by Jean Wiener and Clément Ducet as well as Lud Gluskin ). He then returned across the Atlantic around 1928 and was successfully followed by Marion Harris (1928, # 4), Helen Morgan , Sophie Tucker (1928, # 11), Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra (1928, with Vaughan DeLeath , vocals, # 15 ) and Fred Rich and His Orchestra (1928, also recorded with Vaughan DeLeath, # 19) and others; Benny Goodman also had a hit (# 20) with The Man I Love in 1937 . The Gershwin song soon became a popular jazz standard .
Later cover versions
From the large number of interpretations, the versions by Billie Holiday (1939), Coleman Hawkins (1943), Lester Young (1946), Miles Davis / Thelonious Monk (1954), Art Tatum (1933), Ella Fitzgerald (1959), Mary Lou Williams (1975), Zoot Sims (1975) Ray Charles (1956) and Betty Carter (1988). The discographer Tom Lord lists a total of 1079 (2015) cover versions in the field of jazz .
literature
- Alec Wilder : American Popular Song. The Great Innovators, 1900-1950. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1972, ISBN 0-19-501445-6 .
- Ira Gershwin: Lyrics on Several Occasions. Limelight Editions, New York City 1973.
- Philip Furia: Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, ISBN 0-19-508299-0 .
- Ted Gioia : The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-993739-4 .
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ^ A b c d Marvin E. Paymer, Don E. Post: Sentimental Journey: Intimate Portraits of America's Great Popular Songs . 1999, p. 61 ff.
- ↑ Michael Feinstein The Gershwins and Me: A Personal History in Twelve Songs , Simon & Schuster: New York 2012, p. 54
- ↑ Michael Feinstein The Gershwins and Me , p. 59
- ↑ Michael Feinstein The Gershwins and Me , p. 51
- ↑ a b Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online)
- ^ Ted Gioia The Jazz Standards , p. 256
- ↑ Information at Jazzstandards.com