THE GERSHWIN SONGBOOK
J A Z Z V A R I A T I O N S
DICK HYMAN
PIANO
Fascinating Rhythm
[1] Original
[2] Variation
Somebody Loves Me
[3] Original
[4] Variation
I Got Rhythm
[5] Original
[6] Variation
Nobody But You
[7] Original
[8] Variation
Stairway to Paradise
[9] Original
[10] Variation
Do It Again
[11] Original
[12] Variation
Strike Up the Band
[13] Original
[14] Variation Who Cares?
[15] Original
[16]Variation Liza
[17] Original
[18] Variation Swanee
[19] Original
[20] Variation
The Man I Love
[21] Original
[22] Variation
That Certain Feeling
[23] Original
[24] Variation
Oh, Lady Be Good
[25] Original
[26] Variation
Do,Do,Do
[27] Original
[28] Variation
Sweet and Low-Down
[29] Original
[30] Variation
Sweet and Low-Down
[29] Original
[30] Variation
Clap Yo' Hands
[31] Original
[32] Variation 'S Wonderful
[33] Original
[34] Variation
My One and Only
[35] Original
[36] Variation
All songs published by Warner Brothers Music, ASCAP.
DICK HYMAN PIANO
"Playing my songs as frequently as I do at private parties," George Gershwin wrote in 1932, at age 34, "I have naturally been led to compose numerous variations upon them, and to indulge the desire for complication and variety that every composer feels when he manipulates the same material over and over again." By all accounts, Gershwin played his own songs brilliantly; the few recordings he made bear this out. Keeping his melodies clearly audible, he added rhythmic, harmonic and contrapuntal embellishments and devices that turned the songs into virtuoso piano pieces.
Fortunately, Gershwin notated variations on eighteen of his songs, most of them classics, in a songbook published by Simon and Schuster in 1932. By then Gershwin was world-renowned as the composer of Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F, and An American in Paris, as well as hundreds of songs for musical comedies with lyrics by his brother Ira.
Like other great jazz pianists since Gershwin's time, Dick Hyman has improvised throughout his career on many of Gershwin's standards. For this recording, Hyman, perhaps the most eclectic pianist on the scene today, has taken a unique approach: he plays each of Gershwin's tiny gems as written. He then uses the complex Songbook transcriptions, rather
than the simpler sheet music, as the basis for improvisation. This is indeed a landmark album. Hyman praises the set of transcriptions as "small masterpieces that are both pianistic and orchestral in their scope, presenting elegant contrapuntal devices and a wealth of intricate chromatic harmony. They perfectly notate the Gershwin style and give us the clearest access to his keyboard ingenuity."
He continues, "Because these songs are so well known by now, I can do what Gershwin could not in his brief arrangements: I can leave the melody altogether in my improvisations, as jazz players have been doing for generations. Of course, I revere these melodies so much that I don't always strike out for new territory. Sometimes I just want to continue in the direction which the composer was suggesting. To paraphrase one of his titles, there are some fascinating implications."
Like Gershwin, Hyman has synthesized an exceedingly wide range of improvisatory styles, from Chopin to James P: Johnson to his teacher, Teddy Wilson. Hyman's improvisations are completely his own; they do not sound like extensions of Gershwin's style. Gershwin's are more breathless and per-
cussive; Hyman's, cooler and more distilled. But Hyman's feel for Gershwin is so deep that Gershwin-to-Hyman has its own inner musical logic. Hyman divides his improvisations into three categories: "Some are continuations of the Gershwin arrangements -- expansions, commentaries." Others go farther afield, in a different-every-time blend of Gershwin and Hyman. The third type are improvisations on "those songs which have been much repeated in the jazz repertoire." These are "completely disjunct" from Gershwin's originals.
Fascinating Rhythm -- Hyman calls the song, and Gershwin's arrangement, a "study in syncopation ... the left hand moving ostinato [steady beat] is continuously poised against the syncopation of the right hand melody. It is one of those pianistic devices that Gershwin did so easily and out of which many of his compositions flow." As for Hyman's improvisation, which strays far from Gershwin's, he terms it "pure stride playing, a la James P. Johnson with some Fats Waller devices."
Somebody Loves Me
-- Gershwin's arrangement features a technique the composer learned from a pianist of his day, Mike Bernard -- in George's words, "Bernard's habit of playing the melody in the left hand
while he wove a counterpoint with the right." "However," Hyman adds, "Gershwin inverts the process in the bridge with a right-hand melody and a counter melody in the left." Hyman characterizes his own improvisation as at first a continuation of Gershwin's approach, but he later alludes to Gershwin's Concerto in F.
I Got Rhythm -- Gershwin's arrangement has certain orchestral characteristics, according to Hyman, with the first bridge sounding to him like a trumpet solo. Hyman's variation starts with "a very rhythmic impetus, to get things moving, as though I were playing Latin percussion -- literally the 'rhythm' of the title. The melody is so well known, and the subject of so many jazz improvisations, that I barely suggest it." He terms what he does a kind of "bebop piano playing." "The intro starts low and rumbling," he says, "proceeds into chaos, resolves into fancy footwork, and descends into the pit again."
Nobody But You -- Hyman characterizes Gershwin's arrangement as in "player piano style" -- Gershwin cut piano rolls to earn money when he was starting out. Hyman hears his own variation as Chopinesque, with a hint of Bix Beiderbecke, the cornetistpianist-composer who was Gershwin's contemporary, plus a salient Gershwin blue
note towards the end.
Stairway to Paradise -- Hyman notes that Gershwin's melody line is based on a familiar boogie-woogie bass motive, which inspired Hyman's improvisation; he was thinking especially, he points out, of boogie-woogie pianist Jimmy Yancy in his Yancy Special, as well as other early blues pianists. In the midst of his improvisation, Hyman plays the song's verse melody; none of the Gershwin arrangements include the verse. "Stairway's chromatic, ahead-of-its-time verse is remarkable," says Hyman. "Its continuous half-step key changes probably had to do with climbing steps on the set of the show."
Do It Again -- Gershwin's arrangement is romantic, even seductive. Hyman sees his improvisation as an extension of Gershwin's, this time concluding with the melody to the verse, as if inviting us back to do it again.
Strike Up the Band -- is one of Gershwin's more straightforward arrangements. Strike Up the Band is a strange sort of march; despite its martial rhythms, its blue notes (and the lyrics) reveal it as an anti-war rather than a jingoistic song. Hyman's improvisation, which departs greatly from Gershwin's, is one of the album's most daring and inspired. Most notably, it does not feel in the least martial.
There is something off-kilter about it; its whole-tone harmonies are followed by a Bach-like baroque passage and a Hymanesque combination of "Prokofiev and Art Tatum." Hyman caps his piece with a reference to Thelonious Monk which results in "a tongue-in-cheek march style" perfectly suited to the song's ambivalent message.
Who Cares?
-- Hyman says of Gershwin's arrangement, "It must be played carefully. The right hand has to be perfectly smooth as the left hand bounces around." This song, Hyman feels, "has something of the questioning quality of Robert Schumann's piano piece Warum? [Why?] The melody to the words 'who cares?' really asks a question." He continues, "Who Cares? is a song in which the melody allows frequent commentary by a counter melody. I take Gershwin's arrangement a step or two farther than he did," by inserting verse melody towards the end. Though we do not have the words, through Hyman's adroit juxtaposition we sense that everything will come out all right, as the lyric puts it, "so long as I care for you and you care for me."
Liza -- like I Got Rhythm, is a Gershwin song that countless jazzmen have improvised on. Hyman recalls "an informal party recording of James P. Johnson playing chorus after chorus
for Eubie Blake, Fats Waller and other colleagues." Art Tatum was famous for his countless Liza variations; Gershwin actually held a party in honor of Tatum in 1935. Says Hyman of Gershwin's arrangement, "His own ideas for the middle parts of both choruses are so clever, so unexpected, although the preceding left-hand figures and the 'thumb melody' owe a lot to Willie the Lion and James P. Johnson." Hyman again goes his own way; he plays Liza as a waltz and then in 2/4 stride. Echoes of Tschaikowsky figure in his improvisation, which works its way back almost imperceptibly from Tatum to Chopin/Hyman to end the piece.
Swanee -- Hyman notes George's use of oldtime, "down along the levee" ragtime devices and his allusion at the end to Stephen Foster's song Swanee River. Hyman makes even more of this reference by moving it into the left hand, over a fast-moving right hand in which he tips his hat to his teacher, Teddy Wilson, Mel Powell and "the whole Benny Goodman school of pianists."
The Man I Love -- Gershwin's transcription is like an art song arrangement; it is elegant and stately, with few rhythmic tricks. Hyman takes the piece "into a jazz venue," describing his improvisation as "bluestinged." He employs the infrequently used middle sostenuto pedal
to sustain the bass as an organ point without blurring the movement above it.
That Certain Feeling -- Hyman finds this transcription "impassioned and ingenious, with its arpeggiating left hand, full chords in both hands, and the interjection of melodic strains that prompt even Gershwin to leave the melody briefly." Hyman also notes the striking use of grace notes which help lighten the passion. Hyman, like Gershwin, starts with a quote from the famous romantic theme in Rhapsody in Blue, then varies what Gershwin did without straying far from the original intent.
Oh, Lady Be Good! -- became a catch phrase of the lighthearted yet entreating spirit of the twenties, just as the song became another jazz staple. Hyman praises Gershwin's arrangement: "He uses grace notes which immediately tell us that he is being facetious, and then at the first cadence he inserts a musician's joke, a phrase of the old blues song I Want A Big Fat Mama. Then, in the final eight measures, there is a very audacious key change." Hyman's version uses a walking bass reminiscent of pianist Dave McKenna and a right hand line that resembles a tenor saxophone solo. "I started with a big bang and then lightened up all the way to the Count Basie ending."
Do, Do, Do -- Hyman finds Gershwin's transcription "a charming arrangement," that reminds him of Bix Beiderbecke. "The improvisation I did is related to Bix's piano piece, In a Mist. " After emulating Bix the pianist, Hyman moves on to Bix the cornetist, then back to In a Mist, a piece he says influenced him greatly as a youngster.
Sweet and Low-Down -- "This is George playing an early style of boogie-woogie," Hyman says. "This blues bass figure is common to other pieces published in the 1920s, among them Zez Confrey's Mississippi Shivers and Irving Berlin's Home Again Blues." Hyman calls his improvisation, which barely touches Gershwin's melody, "a sort of blues restoration, a return to the kind of piano blues that existed long before Gershwin or Berlin or Confrey."
Clap Yo' Hands- Hyman points out Gershwin's striking chromatic harmonization of the pentatonic melody. He takes Gershwin's same tempo and key but allows the melody, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, to drift into Jumpin' with Symphony Sid, the theme song of Birdland, the New York nightclub of the 1950s where Hyman played. His improvisation ends with strumming and full chords in the manner of pianist Erroll Garner.
been Gershwin's suave harmonies that attracted so many musicians. Hyman notes that the rhythmic device Gershwin uses in the bridge is typical of the dance band style of the late 1920s and can also be found in Rube Blooms’ novelty piano piece Soliloquy. Hyman begins with the melody to the song's verse. While he makes occasional references to Gershwin's melody and harmony, he proceeds mostly in a Tatum-like manner.
My One and Only -- Hyman describes Gershwin's arrangement as "brief but loaded." His variation is a continuation in the same tempo and key. He makes a basso reference to Beiderbecke's colleague Adrian Rollini, the ubiquitous star of the bass sax, and several to Bix himself.
What does Dick Hyman have to say about his variations on George Gershwin's Songbook?
"What you play when you improvise is what you have experienced. Sooner or later it all comes out. I was surprised, when I listened to these eighteen performances, at how many were out-of-tempo and lyrical. I think it was because the songs have such potential that they were an inspiration to me to explore areas that I might not reach in another composer's repertoire. They suggest all sorts of possibilities." Lucky us.
'S Wonderful -- Hyman feels that the melody to this song is so simple that it must have
- Deena Rosenberg
Author of Fascinating Rhythm: The Collaboration of George and Ira Gershwin (Dutton, 1991; Plume paperback, Fall 1993) and the founding chair of the Musical Theatre Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
Throughout a busy musical career which got underway in the early 1950s, DICK HYMAN has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, conductor and composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in over one hundred albums recorded under his own name and even more in support of other artists. While developing a masterful facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Mr. Hyman has investigated the earliest periods of jazz and ragtime and has recorded the music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake, Fats Waller and other early figures. He includes this historical material in his frequent solo recitals. His solo piano series of songs of the great American composers includes, in addition to his newest album of George Gershwin, collections of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen and Cole Porter. Dick Hyman's concert compositions include his Piano Concerto, Ragtime Fantasy and various chamber music. He has performed with his own quintet, with cornetist Ruby Braff and in duo-piano appearances with Derek Smith, Roger Kellaway and the late Dick Wellstood. For the past eight summers he has acted as artistic director of the acclaimed Jazz in July series of concerts at New York's 92nd Street Y.
Mr Hyman has also had a prolific career in New York as a studio musician and has won seven Most Valuable Player Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences
He has acted as music director for various programs such as Benny Goodman's last television appearance and has composed numerous scores for dramas and documentaries. He received an Emmy for his score for Sunshine's On The Way, a daytime drama, and a second Emmy for musical direction of the PBS special on Eubie Blake. More recent services for PBS have been original dramatic scores for the six Tales From The Hollywood Hills and Ask Me Again, as well as serving as music director for the 1989-1990 series In Performance at the White House He has been a guest performer on Garrison Keillor's American Radio Company broadcasts and with Jim Cullum's Jazz Band on Live From Riverwalk
Dick Hyman was the orchestrator of the hit musical Sugar Babies and the composer of the Woody Allen films Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo. He worked with Mr. Allen additionally on Broadway Danny Rose, Stardust Memories, Hannah and her Sisters and Radio Days. Other film scores have included Moonstruck; Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime; The Lemon Sisters; and Alan and Naomi His period arrangements were heard in Billy Bathgate.
In the dance world, Mr. Hyman composed and performed the score for the Cleveland Ballet's Piano Man and for Twyla Tharp's The Bum's Rush with the American Ballet Theater.
