Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Many people, including Paul McCartney, have said that the 1966 Beach Boys song “God Only Knows,” a product of Brian Wilson—with a bit of contribution from Tony Asher—is their favorite rock/pop song.
To wit:
Now I won’t beef about the grammatical error in the title (it should be “Only God Knows,” but that would mess up the rhythm), but I do agree that it’s in the top ten of rock songs. (For me, the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” would probably be #1). The words may be a bit puerile—just another testimony to undying love—but that’s not why the song is famous. It’s the tune and, above all, the vocal embellishments and the complex melody, that makes this song so great. If you don’t mind a bit of arcane music analysis, here’s Rick Beato in a recent video calling “God Only Knows” the “perfect song.” And even if you’re not into Beato’s analysis of melody, you can’t help but see from his analysis how unusual and inventive Wilson’s melody was. Wilson spent days perfecting the song and its recording.
You can see how energized Beato is when he listens to the song and discusses its chords and notes.
Below is the final product as released on the immortal album Pet Sounds (have a look at its lineup of songs at the previous link). There’s a great live performance, with Carl Wilson singing lead (as he did on the record), here. But first, a few words from the Wikipedia entry:
Written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, it is a baroque-style love song distinguished for its harmonic innovation and complexity, unusual instrumentation, and subversion of typical popular music conventions, both lyrically and musically. It is often praised as one of the greatest songs of all time and as the Beach Boys’ finest record.
The song’s musical sophistication is demonstrated by its three contrapuntal vocal parts and weak tonal center (competing between the keys of E and A). Lyrically, the words are expressed from the perspective of a narrator who asserts that life without their lover could only be fathomed by God—an entity that had been considered taboo to name in the title or lyric of a pop song. It marked a departure for Wilson, who attributed the impetus for the song to Asher’s affinity for standards such as “Stella by Starlight“. Some commentators interpret “God Only Knows” as promoting suicidal ideations, although such an interpretation was not intended by the songwriters. Others have compared the song’s advanced harmonic structure to the work of classical composers such as Delibes, Bach, and Stravinsky.
Wilson produced the record between March and April 1966, enlisting about 20 session musicians who variously played drums, sleigh bells, plastic orange juice cups, clarinets, flutes, strings, French horn, accordion, guitars, upright bass, harpsichord, and a tack piano with its strings taped. His brother Carl Wilson sang lead, a vocal performance that became regarded as Carl’s best ever, with Brian himself and Bruce Johnston providing additional harmonies. The song ends with a series of repeating vocal rounds, another device that was uncommon for popular music of the era.
The released version (official video), three minutes of musical genius. The video apparently shows two high-school lovers with one about to go off to college.
I’ve previously posted the video below, but wanted to show it again it again because it documents another connection between the Beatles and “God Only Knows”: George Martin (“The Fifth Beatle”) goes to visit Brian Wilson at his home, and they discuss the song at length, later repairing to the studio where Martin fiddles with the original tapes. It’s five minutes well spent.
Finally, two videos documenting the production of this song in the studio. Both show Wilson’s perfectionism.
Now if you have a different “perfect song” (and “perfect” is subject to different interpretations), please name it below. In lieu of that, give us your favorite song, which may or may not be ‘perfect.” Picking one off the top of my head, I’d say the Beatles’ “In My Life” comes close to perfection (original here). The lovely baroque bridge was written and performed by George Martin.
Watching YouTube the other night, the site thrust me down the rabbit hole of Danny Kaye videos, and I discovered (or had forgotten) what a polymathic talent Kaye was: a great singer, dancer, comedian, actor, and improviser. And although Kaye didn’t play an instrument, he was similar to Louis Armstrong in being beloved, a great improviser, and a great scat singer (listen to Danny Kaye sing Dinah, especially after 2:09). It’s a pity that, to capture all of America as his audience, Armstrong became somewhat of a “mascot” or a “clown”, when in fact he was perhaps the greatest jazz innovator of the 20th century. (Listen to Potato Head Blues from 1927, which to me is the very first jazz solo improvisation. I think it was Woody Allen who, in his movie “Manhattan,” called Potato Head Blues one of the things that made live worth living.)
At any rate, it was a real treat to find Satchmo and Danny Kaye together on ‘The Danny Kaye Show” (January 4th, 1967), singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” What a great combination of singing, playing, and horsing around, with both voices meshing perfectly! (Kaye’s imitation of Armstrong is a hoot.)
I sent this to a friend, who told me to watch it again and pay attention to the body language. His point was that Kaye, in defiance of what white America considered acceptable at the time, was touchy-feely with Armstrong, patting him on the belly, putting his arm around him and showing in every way that a white guy could be friends with a black guy. (Kaye, by the way, was Jewish, born David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn; and Armstrong, partly raised by a white Jewish family who bought him his first trumpet, was a great friend of the Jews, and often wore a Star of David.)
In this video, Armstrong is not as “handsy” as Kaye, and my friend and I discussed whether it was considered uncouth for a black guy to put his arm around a white guy (they do slap each other’s hands). An alternative theory, which is mine, is that Armstrong simply was less touchy-feely than Kaye. To test this, you’d have to look for duets of Armstrong with another black performer, but I’ll leave it to readers to do that. However, there’s another way to test this theory, which is to watch the duet in the second video. But don’t miss this first one!
The second test involves Louis playing a duet with another white man, but a closer friend: Jack Teagarden, a superb jazz trombonist who played with Lous Armstrong’s All-Stars for five years. This video apparently came from the movie “Jazz on a Summer’s Day” (1959), and features one of their classic, laid-back duets, “Old Rockin’ Chair.”
Teagarden was known for his complete lack of racism, and, as Wikipedia notes, “Growing up in an area with a large Black population, Teagarden developed an appreciation for Black music, especially blues and gospel, and was one of the first jazz musicians to incorporate blue notes into his playing.”
Does Satchmo touch Jack more than he did Danny Kaye? In the video, Teagarden puts his arm around Armstrong, just as Kaye did, but Armstrong again isn’t very touchy, though he does rest his head on Teagarden’s chest near the end. So my hypothesis remains untested, but the highlight of this post is not racism in America but the music. Listen and enjoy!
The YouTube notes from the video above:
Here is Louis Armstrong on trumpet & vocal, Bobby Hackett, one of the best cornet players in the world, Jack Teagarden on trombone & vocals, Peanuts Hucko on clarinet with Marty Napoleon, piano, Arvell Shaw on bass & Cozy Cole on drums in New York, on December 30, 1957.
Andrew Sullivan posted this video on his column this week as a “mental health break”. It comprises old movie clips of great dancing, all set to Steely Dan’s “Only a fool would say that.” Wikipedia says this about the song:
“Only a Fool Would Say That” is a song with lyrics rumoured to mock John Lennon’s 1971 song “Imagine“. In 2024, American Songwriter claimed that the lyrics were chiding Lennon for “being out of touch with reality.”
But it’s a great song, and there’s some great dancing below. How many can you recognize? Still, I prefer the originals. The first clip of Astaire and Rita Hayworth is one of my favorites (see the original, ” The Shorty George”, here). And I hope you recognize Cagney in “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Finally, one of the greatest movie performances of dance was the Nicholas Brothers, shown young and old. The original is here.
They don’t dance like this no more. And why has dancing disappeared from the movies? Would people rather see car chases and shootings?
A friend sent me a short article on this song from the Boston Globe called “How Gen Z made Fleetwood Mac the hottest band in America,”, with the subtitle, “Fifty years later, ‘Silver Springs’ remains a breakup ballad for the ages.” The point the sweaty columnist Renée Graham is trying to make is that a particular Fleetwood Mac song has captured the hearts of Generation Z. That song is “Silver Springs“, written by Stevie Nicks. It was intended to be put on Fleetwood Mac’s fantastic album Rumours, but didn’t make it on. As Wikipedia notes:
The subject of the song is the breakup of the romantic relationship between Nicks and Fleetwood Mac guitarist and vocalist Lindsey Buckingham.
Written by Stevie Nicks, “Silver Springs” describes Nicks’ perspective on the ending of her romantic relationship with guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. She said:
I wrote “Silver Springs” about Lindsey. And we were in Maryland somewhere driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Springs [sic]. And I loved the name… Silver Springs sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. And ‘You could be my silver springs’ – that’s just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me.
The “sic” refers to the town of “Silver Spring” (ergo the ‘sic’), located in Maryland near Washington, D.C.; I used to live right by it.
Regardless, those of us of a certain age are well aware of the romantic issues that not only beset the band (Nick and Buckingham broke up, and Christine and John McVie divorced, with Nicks having a brief fling with drummer Mick Fleetwood), but provided some of the best material for their songs. And, according to this article, “Silver Springs” is emblematic of the breakup of Nicks and Buckingham. But first, let’s listen to the song that’s the subject of the Globe article. It’s a live studio performance from 1977, part of a wonderful set.
The lyrics clearly reflect the anger of a woman whose love is not returned since the man she loves (Buckingham) is apparently involved with at least one other women (there were actually several). As far as what happened to cause this famous breakup, well, your mileage may differ depending on what source you read. All that’s clear is that they had a very tight relationship but ultimately couldn’t get along, but were still forced to play together. And so they worked out their emotions in their music, resulting in some of the finest songs of the era. “Rumours” is #7 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 best albums of all time” (Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” is number 1).
Those who dismiss Fleetwood Mac as “pabulum” don’t know what they’re talking about. But the Boston Globe is a bit hyperbolic too! Surely “Silver Springs”, while very good, shouldn’t be the only song that Gen Z loves. Is that generation obsessed with breakups? What about the other great songs from the band, songs like “Rhiannon” or “Everywhere”?
Here’s an extract from the Globe piece:
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham have taken over social media.
To be exact, what’s swarming millions of timelines is their suddenly inescapable 1997 performance of “Silver Springs’’ from a Fleetwood Mac concert that saw the classic lineup — Nicks, a singer and the band’s most affecting songwriter; singer-guitarist Buckingham; singer-keyboardist Christine McVie; bassist John McVie; and drummer Mick Fleetwood — reunited for the first time in a decade.
What was a breakup ballad became a mad scene that could have been plucked from a Verdi opera. Nicks looked at Buckingham, her former lover, while singing about the end of their relationship. “Time cast a spell on you, but you won’t forget me,’’ she sings as she warns him that he’ll “never get away from the sound of the woman that loved you.’’
Gen Z has discovered what generations before them recognized — the raw melodrama and polished pop of Fleetwood Mac. And they can’t get enough.
“I just know that ‘Silver Springs’ is an actual spell that Stevie cast on Lindsey so he would never truly be over her,’’ one woman posted on Instagram. Numerous women are making videos of themselves showing Nicks’s performance to their boyfriends or husbands and schooling them on the song’s history.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Fleetwood Mac in 1998, recently called that song “the performance that launched a thousand TikToks.’’
Capitalizing on their newfound audience, Buckingham, 75, and Nicks, 77 — who met in high school — recently announced that on Sept. 19, Buckingham Nicks, their pre-Fleetwood Mac duo, will reissue a remastered version of their eponymous 1973 album, which has long been out of print and isn’t available on music streaming platforms.
On social media they teased fans into a frenzy with a line from their song “Frozen Love.’’ On Instagram, after Nicks posted “And if you go forward,’’ Buckingham finished the lyric: “I’ll meet you there.’’
“Buckingham Nicks’’ flopped when it was released, although it did catch Fleetwood’s ear, which changed music history. But it’s now one of the year’s most anticipated releases.
Rolling Stone once called Fleetwood Mac “the lovingest, fightingest, druggingest band of the ’70s.’’ They were also one of the best when Buckingham and Nicks joined the British band in 1974. The couple’s unraveling relationship and creatively fruitful aftermath made the band pop music’s most enduring soap opera. As Buckingham and Nicks were breaking up, so were the McVies, and then Nicks had an affair with Fleetwood — all while recording the monumental “Rumours.’’
Released in 1977, that album is a diary of anger, fragile hope, and the irreparably frayed bonds of love flung open to the world. Unlike today’s artists who create vexing guessing games around which romantic partner is being referenced, with Nicks and Buckingham there was nothing to decipher. Pretty much every song they wrote was a message to the other.
(“Silver Springs’’ was cut from that album, surfacing only as a B-side to Buckingham’s biting hit, “Go Your Own Way.’’)
Like the band itself for decades, Buckingham and Nicks broke up but never fully broke apart. And the authenticity of their tribulations keeps finding new, eager audiences.
The Globe article included this screenshot from the video (at 2:38), showing Nicks glaring at Buckingham. But it exaggerates the truly conflicted feelings both of them had after the breakup. (See the end of “Landslide,” below.)
Well, yes, perhaps “Silver Springs” could be getting as popular as the article notes, but remember the other songs with the same theme, including this one:
And the rancor wasn’t on tap in this song from the same session, which happens to be my favorite Fleetwood Mac song (it’s a Nicks product, of course). Be sure to watch at the end.
I guess what I’m trying to say with this post is that if you idolize a band because a single one of your songs expresses your feelings about a relationship, you’re going to miss a lot of the other great music from that band.
The Free Press article (see below) is in fact correct in extolling how great and yet how overly criticized is the music of Billy Joel. I agree with author Eli Lake, though Joel’s music is hardly unrecognized: you can hear it on all the “oldie” radio stations. Right off the bat I can name three all-time classics written and recorded by Joel: “Piano Man,” “Uptown Girl, ” and, my favorite, “Only the Good Die Young”, a work of genius about trying to court a parentally cloistered Catholic girl. In fact, let’s hear that one right now. The words are clever and the tune original and memorable. I’ve put a live video below, but you can also hear the recorded version here.
If you have a subscription to the Free Press, you can read Eli Lake’s anodyne piece by clicking below (it’s not archived), but also hear about the rock greats who consider Joel a genius. I agree. Where Eli Lake goes wrong is his list of other bands that he ranks up there with Joel, and there he’s just dead wrong. He also dismisses bands that were great, like the Eagles.
A few quotes:
Rock music is a fickle thing. There are some artists who will be forever cool like Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, or Nirvana. And then there are the unapologetic sellouts, the stars that sold a stew of pabulum and clichés to millions of eager sheep. The Eagles or Electric Light Orchestra come to mind. These are the frauds whose insipid compositions inspired a new generation of punk rockers to burn down all that came before them.
“Frauds”? FRAUDS? This is where I began to suspect that Lake doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I agree with the Electric Light Orchestra being pabulum, but The Eagles? Well, this is all about taste, of course, but I’ll claim that several Eagles songs are classics, and these include “Lyin’ Eyes”, “I Can’t Tell You Why“, and “The Boys of Summer” (granted, it’s by Don Henley and not his Eagles, but it’s still a wonderful song about growing older).
Here’s my favorite, “Lyin’ Eyes”, about a woman, married to an uncaring older man, having an adulterous affair.
As for Elvis Costello, meh, and I never got into Nirvana. Now I grant that, as a proportion of total musical output that was great, Joel edges out the Eagles, but dismissing their music as “pabulum” is stupid and ignorant. (I will admit that “Hotel California” is dreadful.)
Anyway, I’ve defended the Eagles, so let’s see what the article says, correctly, about the quality of Joel’s music:
The bard from Hicksville, Long Island [Joel], hated the critics who looked down their noses at him. He used to rip up their reviews onstage and encourage his adoring fans to boo them. And after more than 50 years of taking their slings and arrows Joel has achieved his revenge in a two-part HBO documentary that aired on July 18 and July 25. And So It Goes, named after one of the deep cuts from his 1989 Storm Front album, is littered with interviews from a slew of recording artists universally acknowledged as rock’s gods. And whaddya know, all of them can’t shower enough praise on Billy Joel.
“Billy’s melodies are better than mine,” says Bruce Springsteen. Paul McCartney reveals that Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” is a song he wished he had written.
Most astonishing of all, Nas, one of hip-hop’s titans, couldn’t stop gushing about one of Billy Joel’s schmaltziest hits, “Piano Man,” with its lilting waltz rhythm and poignant sketches of the barflies Joel encountered when he played at a dive bar in Los Angeles. “‘Piano Man’ is a mirror facing a mirror,” the rapper says. “You can just see infinite reflections.”
He’s right. The lyrics of “Piano Man” are sheer poetry.
I will try to find and watch that HBO documentary, though “Just The Way You Are” and “Uptown Girl” are not exactly how Lake later describes Joel’s music:
Great music finds an audience. And Billy Joel found his. He did not invent a new style. He did not pioneer a new recording process or write songs that sparked a revolution. Like so many great writers, he wrote what he knew, which in his case was the angst and heartbreak of middle-class late-20th-century suburban life.
Here Lake is just phoning it in. Does he know that “Uptown Girl” is about Joel’s romances with Christie Brinkley, whom he later married, and Elle MacPherson? That hardly shows “the angst and heartbreak of middle-class suburban life”, for Joel wouldn’t even have had relationships with those lovely women had he not been famous for his music. Yes, in the song he takes on the persona of a “backstreet guy,” but there’s no angst in that song. Nor is there any in “Just the Way You Are,” which, while excellent, is a conventional love song. (Listen to it here.)
I think the Free Press needs a better critic of rock music. Like maybe somebody (unlike Lake) who has spent their life listening to and writing about rock music? I can hear it now ringing across the Free Press Newsroom as Bari Weiss calls: “Hey, Eli, there’s a new HBO special on Billy Joel. Could you write something about it for us?
The Berklee College of Music in Boston is one of the better schools of music in America, somewhat like Juilliard but not as good and, importantly, Berklee, unlike Juilliard concentrates on modern music. Wikipedia says this about it:
Berklee College of Music (/ˈbɜːrkli/) is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, hip hop, reggae, salsa, heavy metal and bluegrass.
I knew about it when I lived in Boston and Cambridge, but at that time Berklee didn’t have this (click to read):
What does jazz have to do with gender justice. Well, these days one might well ask the question, “What doesn’t have to do with gender justice?” When you see the name, you can almost write the specifics, a few of which are indented below:
What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?
The jazz industry remains predominantly male due to a biased system, imposing a significant toll on those who aspire to work in it. In understanding the importance of balance and equity, the goal of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice is to do corrective work and modify the way jazz is perceived and presented, so the future of jazz looks different than its past without rendering invisible many of the art form’s creative contributors.
The Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice will focus on equity in the jazz field and the role that jazz plays in the larger struggle for gender justice. The institute will celebrate the contributions women have made in the development of the art form as well as frame more equitable conditions for all pursuing careers in jazz in an effort to work toward a necessary and lasting cultural shift in the field.
Inclusive to All
We welcome students of all gender and sexual identities to achieve the goal of true gender diversity in the field. The institute will work to address gender inequities at the college through curriculum, recruitment, residencies, performances, research, and community engagement.
Our Mission
The mission of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice is to support and sustain a cultural transformation in jazz, with the commitment to recruit, teach, mentor, and advocate for musicians seeking to study or perform jazz, with gender justice and racial justice as guiding principles.
Our Values
Imagination
Equity
Freedom
Identity
Our Vision
We cultivate creative practice and scholarship within an integrated and egalitarian setting. We seek to engage ourselves and others in the pursuit of jazz without patriarchy, and in making a long-lasting cultural shift in the overall music community, recognizing the role that jazz can play in the larger struggle for social justice.
Note that they are striving for equity, which means that they want their students and professors, and jazz in general, to be absolutely representative of the sex admixture in America itself. That is, 50% of jazz performers and composers are to be female. The implicit assumption is that this lack of equity reflects sexism and the patriarchy which of course needs to be shown.
Further, the explicit assumption is that the two sexes (or people who don’t identify as “cis”) will produce different types of jazz, a type that is not “male biased”—a jazz not infused with the sound of patriarchy. That, too, is a problematic assumption.
I don’t think I need to muse about the wokeness represented by this institute, which attempts to achieve jazz equity by admitting and educating students after they’ve already finished high school. That, too, is problematic, for if there are biases or inequalities of opportunity that impinge on the sexes earlier in life, then perhaps they can’t be rectified in college.
At any rate, here are the questions that Berklee should have asked itself before founding this institute:
By striving for equity, you are assuming that members of both sexes (or those who don’t identify as members of their biological sex) have an equal desire to create, sing, or play jazz, and the absence of this equity reflects biases (this is implicit in the word “patriarchy”. What evidence do you have for this equality of desires?
Are there possibly other reasons for an absence of women in jazz beyond “patriarchy”? Could women not have less of a preference to play or compose jazz than do men? Or are they less competitive musically—less willing to put in the many hours needed to excel when there are other things to be interested in, or less competitive because, as some have suggested, excelling in music is a way to attract mates. (This “sexual selection” hypothesis might be least partly possible: I remember Charlie Parker saying that although he wasn’t any great shake in looks, his ability with the sax got him a lot of sex.) In other words, what evidence do you have that inequities are not due to factors other than biases?
You state explicitly that the forms of jazz produced by musicians with “equity” would be different from what it is like today? This assumes that the sexes have, on average, palpably different ways of producing or playing jazz. What evidence do you have for this?
Why do you think it is possible to rectify any biases against women in jazz by taking action on the college level? Would it not be better to afford everyone equal opportunities to become jazz composers or musicians when they are younger? And what if affording such equal opportunity still produced inequities, as it would if the sexes differed in abilities, interests, or preferences? Would you still try to achieve equality of representation?
Now I’ve listened to a lot of jazz, and yes, there is a paucity of women composers and players, though there are plenty of women who sing jazz. But before I’d try to construct a program that is designed to turn out equal numbers of male and female players and composers, I’d sure like to know the answers to the questions above. But I doubt Berklee even asked themselves these questions, and, if they didn’t, then what they have is a performative institute—in both senses of the word.
On one of my CDs I have an old 1945 version of Charlie Parker playing “All the Things You Are,” with notes that it came from “Early Bird: The Best of the 1945 Studio Recordings.” I accidentally hit the “play button” on my iTunes site, where I put it, and listened to the song, immensely impressed. It’s done a group, but the main player on my version is Bird (his pal Dizzy Gillespie is on trumpet).
Sadly, I couldn’t find that version of the song on YouTube, but I found a couple by Diz and Bird that were close, and both show Parker’s tremendous dexterity and improvisation. I’ve put two versions below. For some reason, jazz greats like these always recognized which popular songs, like this one, could be turned into jazz classics. But the jazz-ability of pop songs is also part of their structure (see below):
“All the Things You Are” was written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein and introduced in a play in 1939. The Wikipedia entry says this:
The chorus has become a favorite with many jazz musicians. The chorus is a 36-measure AA2BA3 form with two twists on the usual 32-bar AABA song-form: A2 transposes the initial A section down a fourth, while the final A3 section adds an extra four bars.
. . .The modulations in this song are unusual for a pop song of the period and present challenges to a singer or improviser, including a semitone modulation that ends each A section (these modulations start with measure 6 in the A and A2 sections and measure 9 of the A3 section), and a striking use of enharmonic substitution at the turnaround of the B section (last two measures of the B Section), where the G♯ melody note over a E major chord turns into an A♭ over the F minor 7 of measure 1 of section A3.
Because of its combination of a strong melody and challenging but logical chord structure, “All the Things You Are” has become a popular jazz standard. Its changes have been used for such contrafact tunes as “Bird of Paradise” by Charlie Parker,[2] “Prince Albert” by Kenny Dorham, “All The Things That You Can C#” by Charles Mingus, and “Boston Bernie” by Dexter Gordon. “Thingin'” by Lee Konitz introduced a further harmonic twist by transposing the chords of the second half of the tune by a tritone.
Well, I don’t know from enharmonic substitutions, but I do know modulation, and I love these versions. This first one starts with Diz’s trumpet, with Parker entering at 0:43. But there’s not enough Parker in this version.
The musicians are given as Dizzy Gillespie ( trumpet), Charlie Parker (alto sax), Clyde Heart [sic, it’s “Hart”) (piano), Remo Palmieri [sic, it’s Palmier] (guitar), Slam Stewart (bass), Cozy Cloe [sic; it’s “Cole“] (drums). Slam Stewart is particularly good on bass, but all the solos are very good. This is jazz at its best.
This one has more Bird and hence more improvisation, but it’s still not as good as the 1945 version I have but can’t post. However, this one is still terrific. Diz comes in at 1:33.
Below: a vocal-and-instrumental version featuring Artie Shaw on the sweet licorice stick and Helen Forrest on vocals. (There’s also an excellent vocal version by Sarah Vaughan here.)
They don’t make jazz like this any more: this is another musical genre that has reached its apogee (in my view, with John Coltrane) and gone downhill.
And of course kudos have to go to Kern and Hammerstein for writing such a beautiful and unusual song. I don’t know how people do it.
