Gershwin–Lady Be Good, Smithsonian Part 2 and Fenton

Let’s start with Part 2 of the Smithsonian recording.

We don’t have many recordings from 1924 of “Oh, Lady Be Good,” but we did find one. It is Carl Fenton’s instrumental version, and it capture the heat of the song, even if the orchestration may differ from the one heard on Broadway. By the way, Max Steiner was one of the orchestrators assigned to the show by T.B. Harms. He eventually found his way to Hollywood and became a great music director and composer. We featured him prominently when we did a series on Broadway orchestrators and music directors who went west and reinvented themselves into really good composers.

Here is Carl Fenton and His Orchestra.