Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

I am spending New Year's Eve with the Gershwins (George and Ira) doing one of their classic songs, one that is very stylish and jazzy. And, and it's also very sultry, when sung by a woman, which was the intention. The song is The Man I Love, but for decades, Tony Bennett has been singing it as The Girl I Love. And, if Tony Bennett says it's OK that makes it A-OK in my book. 

And the fact is, when I started working on this, I expected to have a female vocalist: my good friend Karen Mitchell.  But, Karen had to postpone her visit, plus, we settled on another song for her: How Do You Keep The Music Playing by the French composer Michel LeGrand, which is very beautiful. I am looking forward to doing that with her. 

But, I still wanted to do this song because I had worked on it, and it's challenging.  These jazzy chords are not intuitive; they don't come easy to me. But, I got through it, so please give it a listen. 

This song didn't see daylight during Gershwin's lifetime. He wrote it in 1924 for the musical Lady Be Good, but it was rejected. Likewise for Strike Up The Band in 1927. It didn't appear until the 1947 movie of the same name, The Man I Love, in which it was featured throughout. It quickly became a popular standard after that. But, that was 10 years after Gershwin's tragic death. But, the song finally made it to Broadway, being included in the musical An American in Paris in 2015. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teepTIw-JLQ&feature=youtu.be