With the tremendous Al Jolson-propelled success of "Swanee" in 1919, George Gershwin was suddenly a hot property and George White engaged him to compose for his popular annual revues, George White's Scandals, from 1920 until 1924. Of the more than 50 numbers confected for these affairs, only "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" and "Somebody Loves Me" are remembered, the former because its striding syncopations so perfectly render Jazz Age ebullience, and the latter because it so winsomely transcends it. The lyrics, by old hands B.G. DeSylva and Ballard MacDonald, deftly broach the notion of the fated soul mate ("When this world began/It was heaven's plan/There should be a girl for ev'ry single man"), matched by Gershwin with an ingenuous, once-upon-a-time down-stepping figure which, in the course of a few bars, weaves an aura of longing expectation ("I'm clutching at straws, just because/I may meet her yet"). Expectation is answered by one of the all-time-great Gershwin anthems, hovering between hope and trepidation ("Somebody loves me/I wish I knew, Who can she be worries me"), whose alternations become a sort of demotic incantation ("For ev'ry girl who passes me I shout Hey! Maybe/You were meant to be my loving baby").

All the hallmarks of the great Gershwin standards are here, harmonic piquancy poised with narrative cunning, rhythmic verve springing from the geste of the lyrics, and viscerally compelling melody lifting commonplaces into a stratosphere of timeless glamour, suffused with an aspiring conviction that life is, after all, good. In its way, it is as fine as any of Schubert's Lieder. The year was 1924—the year of The Man I Love, Lady, Be Good!, which included "The Half of It," "Dearie Blues," and "Fascinating Rhythm," and Rhapsody in Blue—the year in which a young Tin Pan Alley apprentice became the sorcerer known as George Gershwin.





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