We can thank composer-arranger Kay Swift, composer of “Fine and Dandy” and George Gershwin’s married secret lover, for making sure this song found its perfect setting in this 1947 20th Century Fox musical after his untimely death ten years earlier.

Castles were crumbling
And daydreams were tumbling
December was battling with June
But on this bright afternoon
Guess I'll be changing my tune

swift-gershwinAbove Kay Swift and her secret love: Barbara Cook and Tony Perkins sing “Changing My Tune” in Ben Bagley’s legendary recording series of deep Broadway cuts.


“When someone in the story is famous, every moment of his existence has, for people who care, an aura of significance, and there will always be people with a quasi-authority who think they know things they could not possibly know, simply because they have a lot of information and curiosity and a sense of entitlement to “the truth” about George Gershwin, as if sufficient obsession and possession of a lot of verifiable facts can earn both entitlement to and knowledge of the unknowable.”

from The Memory of All That (Broadway Books, 2012)
by Katharine Weber, Kay Swift’s granddaughter



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