Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra (feat. George Gershwin on piano) - Rhapsody in Blue

Paul Whiteman, leader of the best jazz-influenced dance band of the ’20s, commissioned George Gershwin in 1923 to write a more challenging orchestral based jazz piece for his orchestra of jazz musicians to try. The request was pure self-promotion for Whiteman while young George Gershwin had little experience with such music. It seemed set up to be a valiant failure, but the result was no less than “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Gershwin himself conducted from the piano for the first ever recording of the song in 1924, but the audio recording technology was still poor. In 1927 he sat again at the piano with the Whiteman Orchestra to record the first definitive version of the classical/jazz song using new “electrical” recording technology (this version was definitive until Ferde Grofé re-arranged “Rhapsody” for piano and orchestra in 1942). In its entirety the piece runs about 19 minutes, but because of technological limitations of the recording discs, both early Gershwin arrangements are abridged to last only nine minutes.

By 1927, Gershwin had matured (for example his musical Funny Face, starring Fred and Adele Astaire, debuted in ‘27) and by then Whiteman had cherry-picked some of the best musicians in the country to fill out his band… more on this aspect tomorrow. This recording placed each firmly at the top of his respective cultural domain. Again, thank you 1927!