Gershwin, George

Since described as the best popular song ever written, this gem was inexplicably dropped from Lady Be Good, the Gershwins' first complete Broadway score, before it reached New York. However, it had an unlikely champion in the then Lady Mountbatten who brought her autographed copy back to London where soon nearly every band was playing it by ear, and from where its popularity spread to Paris and beyond. In this version, originally marked "not necessarily narcissistically", the arranger Bill Thorp subtly suggests the identity of the eponymous 'man'.

Little is known of Irving Caesar's alternative lyric (and title Swansea) for this, George Gershwin's first big success (1919). Prompted by an unexpected and entirely spurious visit to Wales the following year, the new version is suffused with Celtic overtones and contains the legendary lines "I'd give the world to be, Among the folks in D-Y-F-E-D". The next port of call on the companions' short European tour (reflected in this arrangement by Bill Thorp) was Prague (aha!) where they eagerly imbued the Bohemian spirit and lifestyle of the artistic community centred on Novy Svet (literally 'New World'), the old poor quarter.

This wistful song first appeared in George White's Scandals of 1924 and has been deservedly popular ever since. The chorus begins with the query "Somebody loves me, I wonder who?", which prompted the arranger Bill Thorp to mark this, one of his pet arrangements, "with an enquiring mind", and to musically explore possible solutions, considering Maria, Liza and Susie along the way before settling on his faithful boyhood friend (and dedicatee) 'my old dog', whose name you are invited to discover.

Here with an introduction that looks like a (slightly rickety) staircase, this song was included in George White's Scandals of 1922 at the Globe Theatre, New York, conducted by Paul Whiteman, for whom Gershwin was two years later to write Rhapsody in Blue. The song's dancing theme prompted the arranger Bill Thorp to dedicate his version to Fred Astaire; he also originally marked it to be played "horticulturally", an exotic instruction whose only justification seems to be a line from the song's second verse, wherein appears the exhortation "Get busy .... Lizzy", though it has been suggested that the chorus lyric "I've got the blues" originally read "I've got the pinks". The "fair" mentioned in the following line is thought to be the celebrated one held at the Paradise Gardens, Berghald, Switzerland.

The irresistible 'S Wonderful' featured in the 1927 Broadway show Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. (Astonishingly, Fred also starred in the Paramount film of Funny Face, made 30 years later, though this time with a young Audrey Hepburn). The arranger Bill Thorp originally marked his version "natalitially", a piece of whimsy suggested by the song's opening line "Life has just begun", which seems to have induced in him a somewhat Messianic train of thought.