This is without a doubt the most hell-for-leather, no-holds-barred, almost pornographic version of Gershwin's Swanee you will ever hear, a real rip-snorter played at a New Years party by the master Gershwin interpreter, Jack Gibbons. This is proto-Gershwin, restored like an Old Masters painting to its original brilliance, with all the sudsy layers of arrangements stripped away. He makes meticulous transcriptions of original Gershwin piano scores, and I suspect uses the many piano rolls GG made himself (the conventional recordings are mostly poor quality, and shockingly scarce). Piano rolls are kind of like listening to a ghost, which I guess we are in a way, since I've written before that George's ghost still roams freely. We get some information from them, keystrokes, tempo, etc. - but there just isn't a sense that anyone is there. Gibbons has rushed in to fill the void. It's like he's possessed by the spirit when he plays, and who knows? George is like that.
What's so freaking brilliant about Swanee (a juvenile piece that became an unexpected hit when Al Jolson brought it to the stage - oh God, Mammy, all that stuff. . . but still, he made George famous, so we'll forgive it. I guess) is that at the very end, with only a few bars left, he works in quotes from TWO Stephen Foster songs: the original Swanee (Old Folks at Home), and - incredibly - Listen to the Mockingbird. This is woven in so deftly that you almost don't notice it - the notes sparkle like evanescence on water. But you feel the delight. It's what GG did best - convey delight, fun, rapture - even though he didn't really have much of it to spare in his short, mostly lonely life.
I'm convinced that it's those genius little quirky quotes that made George a star. At least, it gave him his first big break. But hell, he'd have got there anyway, don't you think?
