Swanee

You have George Gershwin.

1920 has his first hit record, Swanee.

And Gershwin is definitely trying to bring jazz ingredients into his music.

So the way you hear it is the syncopation, where often the accents aren't falling on the beat anymore.

Again, real or imagined, fictional or non-fictional, we just seem to love them.

because A, they're larger-than-life characters, B, they have theatrical history in them, C, they also have a chance to sing some of the songs that made them famous, like Musical Comedy Man, a forgotten song from the workbook of George M. Cohan.

But let us go through our list.

I want to thank the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund, who are our sponsors in part for 2025.

Thank you very much.

And let us go to someone who made a George Gershwin song a big hit, Swanee, in 1919.

That's Al Jolson.

And Al Jolson, of course, was a real-life entertainer, but he famously played Jakey Rabinowitz, whose stage name in vaudeville was Jack Robin in the immortal film The Jazz Singer.

Well, let's warm up Oscar and get after him, huh? ¶¶ Deep in my heart, that melody will always linger.

Swanee,

how I love you, how I love you, my dear old Swanee.

The folks up north won't see me no more when I get to that Swanee shore.

Someday he'll come along The man I love

And

The number would move through real songs from real eras.

Swanee, Black Bottom, The Peanut Vendor.

Each one marking a different stop along the way, as if the audience were flipping through the decades of her career compressed into one performance.

The sequence needed new costumes, new sets, and weeks of additional shooting.

They filmed Swanee for more than a week, then moved through the other numbers.

By the time they were done, they had spent a full month making one more enormous showcase for Judy Garland.

And with it, production on A Star is Born finally began to wind down.