Medicine: Gershwin

When George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was played by Paul Whiteman's orchestra last year, critics knew that they were listening for the first time to the voice of Broadway talking in its sleep; they were listening to the hot-lipped, two-timing, razz-m'tazzle moan of the saxophones that chuckle and the whistles that whine in the cabarets of Charleston, Memphis, Chicago, in San Francisco roof-gardens and the honkey-tonk joints of Tia Juana; they were listening to tones as strident as peroxided hair, to rhythms that strutted like Negro girls in diamond tiaras. "The most...

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