Gershwin Strike Up the Band 1929 rehearsals
Музыка
Historic 1929 film of George Gershwin playing songs from Strike Up The Band during rehearsals at the Times Square Theatre, New York, shortly before the show's opening in January 1930. The film also includes a short sequence with Gershwin bantering with the show's comedian stars Clark and McCullough. The song extracts on this rare film are: Hangin' Around with You, Strike Up The Band (buck dance), Mademoiselle in New Rochelle & Strike Up The Band (piano solo). All movies courtesy Edward Jablonski.
More information on Gershwin's piano playing can be found at the following webpage: www.jackgibbons.com/gershwinar...
More rare Gershwin movies can also be seen by following Jack Gibbons on Facebook at
/ jackgibbonspiano
For more information visit www.jackgibbons.com/
Пікірлер: 58
AMAZING !!....For most of us , this is the first time in our lives we have Ever Heard the Voice of George Gershwin !!!....
FINALLY I get to hear George talk.
@edisone1
6 жыл бұрын
Look for his radio shows; he talked quite a lot
@diegoarpino2080
3 жыл бұрын
He has such a New Yorker voice haha
@Dylonely42
5 ай бұрын
The voice of an invaluable musical genius.
Wow, this is a RARE time capsule of the 1920s!!!!
Can you imagine being at a party in the Upper West side with Gershwin feeding his ego all evening with his own music??? That friends would have been heaven...
@andrewbarrett1537
Жыл бұрын
I would love to hear that, and then get on a Mississippi riverboat and hear Cliff Hess play.
I wish my father could have seen this, he was a BIG Gershwin fan!
What an insight into sheer genius. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you so much for this clip! The most precious aspect is hearing George Gershwin speak in a more natural conversational tone. You can hear the New Yawker in his speech- what fun! The other radio clips I've heard are more formal. Thanks again.
I've never seen such a respectful comment section 👏🏻 props to you
@bubblegum-bb9mu
5 жыл бұрын
lolz
Thank you, Mr. Jablonski and Mr. Gibbons, for sharing this film. It's wonderful to see national treasures like Gershwin, McCullough and Clark, and all of those young women performing in a sound film from 1929.
what a PRECIOUS fragment of musical history! thank you!
Great film, loved every second. Always been a big fan of George and it was great to see him in action. The roaring twenties, what an era!!
Love the girls and the male dance leader so fun.
Seems a different world! So precious ad rare footage! Something unique about his compositions! His songbook is full of gems! Thanks!
What a great film! Thanks so much for uploading this, Jack and Ed!
Thank you
simply awesome and inspiring!
Felt like such different times back then. Reminds me of Boardwalk Empire. Even recently when I went back to college to figure out my life, one of the classes I took was history, and one of my research papers I decided to write was about the roles of women in the 20s
Fantastic! Thank you so much for uploading!
exactly 70 years later, in december, I was playing same tune for rehersals in Italian musical "Tributo a George Gerswin", with Christian De Sica. Thank you Jack Gibbons!
I've been doing a research project on George Gershwin and it wasn't until I finished it that I found this clip. I said there was only one known recording of him (playing I Got Rhythm, 1931), and it looks like I was wrong! TIME TO FIX MY ERRORS! Thanks for the video, though!
@p1anosteve
5 жыл бұрын
Yeah, Jack Gibbon's channel has all the film recordings and much of the old audio recordings. He probably knows more about George Gershwin than Gershwin did himself, at least in a musical sense.
Gershwin GOLD.
lovely piece of musical history! thank you for this! In fact, I'm looking back on this because this was the first time I ever saw or heard anything Gershwin, in other words, was the "ambassador" to me and gershwins music
Outstanding Video Recording. Thanks. Out.
A document.Thank.you for posting it
que bonito video gracias jack por subirlo.
@paulaborges8273
2 жыл бұрын
Tr
This film is so rich and valuable. Those eight bars of "Hangin' Around with You" at the beginning, and the Gershwin solo of "Strike Up the Band" give me the jitters. He plays piano like a man playing badminton - so athletic, and preternaturally coordinated. He must have felt like the luckiest guy who ever lived. Until the tumor, that is. Does it exist in a better print? There's one more, all-too-brief, movie of Gershwin, "I Got Rhythm, also on KZread. Are there any others?
This is fabulous! GG was the first "classical" composer I got to know.
Very Special! What else need be said?
All I wanna know is where you get these historic recordings...but we have to thank you for sharing it with us.
I always like watching George at the piano...he died way too young 80 years ago. 🤔
I'm so very Happy that you shared this with the World! I too was thrilled to hear George Gershwin speak. He was Brilliant and it's so cool to be able to hear and see something from 1929 in 2018! :)
The guy’s a genius, apparently learned to play by copying piano rolls. He doesn’t miss a beat.
@andrewbarrett1537
Жыл бұрын
Maybe, but hand played piano rolls had only been around (at least widely-distributed 88-note rolls) in the USA since 1912. (I am leaving out the Welte-Mignon, Hupfeld DEA, Hupfeld Phonoliszt, and Philipps Duca reproducing pianos and rolls from Germany which all predate 1912 and are handplayed, but not USA; and also leaving out the extremely rare and important "New York Music Roll Co" 65-note rolls which were the first handplayed rolls issued in the USA, without artist credits, 1903-1906, but which are like hen's teeth to find today and so not widely distributed nor influential). All prior 88-note USA rolls (and many others issued simultaneously) were arranged on the drawing board. Most later hand-played rolls 1915-1930s may have started out as hand played performances, but were likewise arranged on the drawing board to put them into perfect tempo and also allow for perfect copies to be duplicated by the production perforator without introducing rhythmic timing errors (which made early non-arranged handplayed rolls sound 'jerky'). The simple fact is that most pianists of this era listened to EACH OTHER and learned from EACH OTHERS' STYLES; usually from hearing them play live, but occasionally from studying the artist's audio recordings and/or music rolls, although in this case the objective was not to 'play like a record' or 'play like a piano roll' but to capture stylistic elements of that ARTIST. While certain novel pianistic effects became possible via piano rolls that were not previously possible, after studying the popular piano playing in the USA 1912-1929 rather exhaustively, listening to every solo, band/orchestra, and vocal accompaniment record I could find (and counting), and probably over 3,000 piano rolls (and counting), and comparing with what recordings of the SAME artists I could find (some roll artists are not known to have made surviving audio recordings; some pianists who made recordings, made no rolls), I would wager that a good 75% or more of what is on 'SOLO' (credited to one pianist on the label, no 'assisted' or duet) handplayed rolls, really originated with that pianist and was truly originally played by them. In the case of some early non edited handplayed rolls it was 100% of the material, despite the timing errors... but all of the notes and chord voicings are true (and with some companies, also the mistakes!). At any rate these pianistic STYLES sprung up largely BEFORE and CONTEMPORARY WITH the technology to capture them. From every vintage interview and written account I can find, _in_the_original_era_, most of these stylistic effects were NOT to 'sound like a player piano', but instead had very definite musical purposes, such as 1. acoustically, in pre-amplification days, to CARRY TO THE BACK OF THE THEATRE (hence the propensity of many vaudeville pianists to state the melody in filled octaves, and play the left hand in either octaves, or tenths, or low notes, and use other 'thick' textures much more than more recent pianists). This is quite noticeable in this sound film where Mr. Gershwin (and no doubt, practically every other Broadway pianist of that early time) had to play FORTISSIMO or DOUBLE FORTISSIMO in order to simply be HEARD over the dozens or hundreds of dancing shoes hitting the stage at once. When piano amplification came in, it was no longer necessary to play so heavily or use such thick textures. 2. to MAINTAIN GOOD VOICE LEADING like in orchestral music... this can be tricky for solo instruments like the piano when confronted with more than 2 voices to maintain (bass and treble), but ever since the 19th century, pianistic technique was such that pianists found novel ways to maintain tenor and/or alto lines independently, wayyy before hand played rolls were anything other than a pipe dream. 3. To EMULATE THE VIBRATO/TREMOLO OF OTHER INSTRUMENTS. In those days, it was common for singers, violinists, cellists, etc and other instrumentalists to play with a more or less heavy vibrato, the depth and speed changing with the intensity of the music as appropriate to the passage (and also unique to that artist). The piano cannot do this, obviously, so this was done via octave tremolos (most commonly), single-note tremolos (more rarely) or trills (also more rarely). When roll arrangers did this, to emulate other instruments, it was often on the label, like "mandolin arrangement", "marimba" or "saxophone", all referring to emulating the throbbing vibrato or rapid tremolos of those instruments. But again, this technique, as in classical piano, goes back decades before the first hand played piano rolls. Also, a piano cannot sustain notes for very long (compared with most other wind or bowed string instruments), so a long tremolo was one effective way of sustaining a note for a long time. I hope this helps a bit.
@andrewbarrett1537
Жыл бұрын
I would second your opinion of Mr. Gershwin as a genius. No doubt. He was not only a composing/arranging genius, he was also a very advanced popular pianist for his day, and compares favorably to other 1920s ahead-of-their-time salon and pop pianists like McNair Ilgenfritz and Lee Sims, in terms of advanced harmony usage and use of textures or voicings that would not become commonplace until decades later. Eubie Blake remembered hearing stories (in the mid-teens, when Gershwin was just a teenager) of this 'very good ofay [white] pianist at Remick's' (Mr. Gershwin was working as a 'song plugger' or demonstrator of new tunes to Remick-associated vaudeville acts for that publishing house), who 'knew all kinds of 'tricks' even the very hard ones'. The full quote is as follows: “James P. Johnson and Luckey Roberts told me of this very talented ofay [white] piano player at Remick’s. They said he was good enough to learn some of those terribly difficult tricks that only a few of us could master.”
Luv me ma boi George
Unbelievable… and he was human.
Wasn't this the product of "Movie Tone News?" I read he didn't more live recordings thinking that he was young and there was time later of that...So, glad we have clips like these and other archival treasures.
Thanks for posting this!!! Is there any other surviving sound footage of any other 1920s/1930s pianists rehearsing casts like this? Perhaps Adam Carroll, Arden and Ohman, Ralph Rainger, Edwin Weber, Phil Schwartz, Frank Black, etc?
@casparpolitman
7 жыл бұрын
Andrew Barrett try Charlie kunz and Gibbons in britain i think they were filmed often by British pathe in 1929-1935
@andrewbarrett1537
6 жыл бұрын
Thanks, I'll check this out!
Cambridge IELTS 14 test 3, Listening ?
Gershwin, NYC.😮🎉🎉🎉 WGNJMNFAS
Gone 83 years! There's no one alive who actually knew Gershwin. But, his music lives on!
What did he say?
Man, he could tickle those iivories!
I’ve been obsessed with Rhapsody since 3rd grade, (1985), when Ms. Benz introduced us to composer, George Gershwin. Every time I hear Rhapsody…I am physically moved. I’ve probably watched 50-60 different performances of Rhapsody in Blue. Can anyone tell me, is this video recording actual “real” conversation? Or. Was this “acting” dialogue happening? I would LOVE TO KNOW 💝.
@JackGibbonsHQ
2 жыл бұрын
This was a promotional film for the Gershwins’ new show “Strike Up The Band” and the spoken section used scripted dialogue (an alternative take of the same scene shows the words being only slightly altered with repetition).
@sassiwich3491
2 жыл бұрын
@@JackGibbonsHQ thank you so much! I seriously, naively was pondering if people actually spoke all cheesy like that in real life…, in the 20’s-30’s?!😂
@sassiwich3491
2 жыл бұрын
@@JackGibbonsHQ do you by chance know which performance/version the United Airlines used in commercials in the 80’s ?
Incredible piano but terrible singing and dancing