Three Evenings With Fred Astaire

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In 1958 Fred Astaire embraced the newly-popular television medium for a one-off special entitled An Evening with Fred Astaire. One of his guests was jazz trumpeter Jonah Jones, whose then-recent recording of the blues number ‘St. James Infirmary’ inspired Astaire to invite him to perform it as an accompaniment to one of his most evocative dances. The climax of the hour was a medley of ten of Astaire’s greatest hits. To Astaire’s surprise, the reaction to the special was overwhelmingly positive, with Newsweek branding it ‘one of TV’s finest hours’. Even better, the production walked off with nine Emmys. Astaire won an Emmy Award for his performance.

So it was without hesitation that Another Evening with Fred Astaire was commissioned the following year. The special had a theme, namely ‘The Beat’, which Astaire announced at the beginning before launching into a number he’d written with Johnny Mercer called ‘The Afterbeat’. As before, the show ended with a medley of his greatest hits.

Not content to rest on his laurels, Astaire was back again a year later for Astaire Time, which added Count Basie and His Orchestra along with the blues singer Joe Williams. The big set piece of the evening was a blues medley in which Joe Williams and the Count Basie Band performed four rhythm numbers while Astaire interpreted the lyrics in a dance. Finally came the now-traditional ‘Fred Astaire Medley’, which this time included two slightly more unusual numbers such as Porter’s ‘Mrs Lowsborough Goodby’ and the title song from Flying Down to Rio.

This is the first time in the CD era that these important recordings have been made widely available. Complementing the soundtracks are eight unusual tracks, many of them unissued or alternate takes, from other periods in Astaire’s career. The earliest is an alternate second take of ‘I’ve Got You on My Mind’ from Cole Porter’s Gay Divorce (1932). The next two tracks take us from Broadway to Hollywood, with unusual versions of Jerome Kern’s songs from the Astaire-Rogers film, Swing Time: ‘A Fine Romance’ with a little-known verse and ‘The Waltz in Swing Time’ with Astaire tapping. His relationship with George Gershwin is celebrated in a track from the memorial concert held at the Hollywood Bowl in September 1937 to commemorate the composer’s early death; Astaire sang one of Gershwin’s final songs, ‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’.

One of Astaire’s other great friends, Irving Berlin, is also present in this collection in an unusual version of the elegiac ‘Change Partners’ from Carefree. Skipping forward a decade, we’re met with a real rarity: a duet with Benny Goodman on a novelty song called ‘The Astaire’ from 1947. Back in Hollywood for the next track, we find ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, a rarity from the unissued soundtrack of Frank Loesser’s underrated score for the Astaire-Betty Hutton movie Let’s Dance. Finally, we return to the time of the TV specials with a new arrangement of ‘Dearly Beloved’ from Jerome Kern’s You Were Never Lovelier: a suitably stylish performance that ties up the links between stage and screen in this Sepia tribute to the Astaire magic.