It's delightful, it's delicious, it's dlevy!

In 1998, for the Gershwin Centennial, Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell joined Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony to record a suite of songs from Porgy and Bess. Interestingly, this is the only song of the suite that actually belongs to Bess. If you’re listening to the new Broadway cast recording and longing to hear Audra sing the role with a full orchestra, this recording might do the trick. 

As an addendum to yesterday’s post on Porgy & Bess: if you’re not up for the full, three-hour-plus operatic treatment but want to get a flavor of the score sung in that style, you can’t do better than this disc with Leontyne Price and William Warfield.

Dionne Warwick at the height of her powers could do just about anything.

I think I mentioned in an early post that the UK’s copyright laws aren’t nearly as insane as those in the US, so albums that are still under copyright here are in the public domain there. That’s how I got a budget-priced bootleg of the soundtrack to the film adaptation of Porgy and Bess. The soundtrack (like, I’m told, the film) is sort of hit and miss, but I have nothing but love for Pearl Bailey leading the chorus in “I Can’t Sit Down.”