The Lady Be So Good

#31 / Jan. 21 Podcast

Nineteen Twenty-Four was a golden year for George Gershwin. After more than a decade of pounding the pavement of New York’s Tin Pan Alley peddling his tunes, Gershwin composed his first major work — “Rhapsody in Blue” — and then that same year he and his brother, Ira, scored their first major hit on Broadway.

The musical comedy “Lady Be Good,” which would run for more than 300 performances, was a showcase for a string of Gershwin brother collaborations, like “Fascinating Rhythm” and, of course, that phenomenal title tune.

Now, that song — the perennial 1920s party tune, “Lady Be Good” — is a rarity among jazz standards in the Great American Songbook. Not many improvisational vehicles survived the transition from the loose Dixieland style of the “Roaring Twenties” to the smooth swing sound of the 1930s and beyond.

But as everyone from Ella Fitzgerald and Mel Tormé to Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Django Reinhardt would demonstrate, “Lady Be Good” has some serious legs.

The Flood started doing the song 20 years ago — it’s features on our second album — and our love of the tune really began to blossom when Doug Chaffin switched from bass to guitar to take charge of the lead on the number.

Then, good golly, it went into full flower more recently when Vanessa Coffman came along with her tenor sax. Click here to listen to Doug and Veezy sharing choruses with Sam St. Clair on “Lady Be Good” at a recent rehearsal.

Deep in the Archives…

By the way, if you’d like to compare The Flood’s Lady 2022 version with a less raucous rendering by Joe Dobbs and Chuck Romine on our 2002 album “The Flood Plays Up a Storm,” you can listen to the entire disc online in our free Radio Floodango music streaming service. Click here to spin the disc. Just move the slider over to the sixth track on the CD to get right to The Lady.

Also…

Finally, if you’d like to brighten your winter’s weekend with a little more of the jazzier Flood tunes from over the years, check out the Swing Channel in Radio Floodango by clicking here. Then settle back from everything from “Bye Bye Blues” and “Up a Lazy River” to “Dinah,” ““Honeysuckle Rose” and “Basin Street Blues.”