OPEN POST: Manor Music Monday With Porgy & Bess Every Which Way!

Greetings, music trollops, and welcome to another edition of Manor Music Monday, today with a little opera, a little Broadway, and a big serving of jazz. Confused? Don't be. Back in the day, whenever a musical opened on The Great White Way, the cast album would frequently rise to the top of the music charts. But wait - there's more. When "My Fair Lady" opened on Broadway, for instance, and released its cast album, what followed were seemingly endless LPs in which singing stars and celebrated jazz luminaries released their own versions of "My Fair Lady." Want to hear jazz notable Shelly Mann kick it with "My Fair Lady?" Step right up! And on and on.

With many musicals, it was an embarrassment of riches, like when "West Side Story" hit the boards and then the record stores. My grandmother, who was way into jazz, was all over these albums. Want to know - and hear - what this transformative music trend was all about? Then make sure and swing by the Manor's "Come Pet My Puddy" lounge, where DJ Li'l Scratch will be spinning a riot of tunes, all of them interpreting a single landmark musical, inspired in this case by the movie version. Wanna guess what that musical is?

If the stunning portrait of Dorothy Dandridge above doesn't tell you, then honestly, I don't know what I'm going to do with you! At any rate, I've become obsessed lately with "Porgy & Bess," the George and Ira Gershwin/DuBose Heyward opera first performed in 1935 (based on the 1925 novel by Heyward), then reshaped, revised and recut for subsequent generations, most recently as a pale and warily received Broadway musical in 2012, which no less than Stephen Sondheim derided (you did not want to get on Stevie's bad side!).

Click on any album cover below to take you to the music.

In the early 1930s, after Heyward turned his novel into a hit Broadway play, the Gershwins came calling. They had grand ambitions, announcing their intention to turn "Porgy & Bess" not into a musical, but a full-scale opera. That's when the legendary Anne Brown - the first Black student admitted to Juilliard's music conservatory - came calling on George Gershwin and insisted that she was the only one who could play Bess. When she next sang for him, that's all it took. He gave her the starring role. Her performance was never captured on film, but she did sing "Summertime" in the 1945 movie, "Rhapsody in Blue." She still stuns:

Surprisingly, the later movie version isn't available on DVD (or even a mangy VHS). Why? Because even though it was selected for preservation by the U.S. National Registry, the pesky Gershwin estate doesn't much like it. Yes, the movie is a bit stagy - one can only imagine how much better it might have been if Otto Preminger hadn't replaced director Rouben Mamoulian - but it does bring together a fantastic cast, most of whom were reluctant to participate at all given the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The movie's story, which included drug dealing, poverty and prostitution, was regarded as racist, or at the very least, something that wouldn't exactly help the cause. Yet despite racially-charged content and the movie's sometimes stiff direction, the cast deliver outstanding performances. And that includes not just Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier (Dandridge and Poitier had their singing dubbed by Adele Anderson and Robert McFerrrin) (yes, he was the father of Bobby McFerrin), but Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll, Maya Angelou, Geoffrey Holder and, of course, Sammy Davis, Jr., who nearly obliterates the movie's period setting by dancing and singing as if he were in a hot-cha! jazz-hands! Fosse musical (but he's allowed). The movie is worth watching. Let's hope one day it gets properly restored and actually released.

I'm still amazed by how plastic and bendable the score has become over the years, subject to endless rethinks and re-interpretations. My favorite these days is "Oscar Peterson Plays," which stays close to the score's melodies, but otherwise lightly gambols into its own springy jazz territory, especially during the inimitable "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "There's A Boat Dat's Leaving," which are pure jazz heaven.

"Porgy & Bess" was catnip for the best jazz vocalists and musicians. Everyone from Joe Henderson to Lena Horne to Louis Armstrong to Cab Calloway have put their mark on the Gershwin/Heyward opera. Even Sammy delivers several surprisingly sensitive renditions from the score. And, yes, it helps a great deal that he's accompanied by Carmen McRae, whose version of "Summertime" ranks right up there with Lena's and Ella's and Helen's and the original Anne and...the list seems infinite, doesn't it? It's an embarrassment of musical riches!

What are you listening to this week? DJ Li'l Scratch wants to know.
Till next time...purr, bitches, purr! 🐾

Photo Credits: Getty Images; Concord Jazz; HighNote Records, Universal Music Group, Columbia Recordings