Marion Harris Sings Gershwin

The singer Marion Harris is mostly forgotten today, even though she was very popular on records and radio from the late teens until the 1930s. Born Mary Ellen Harrison in 1896, possibly in Indiana, she was on Broadway in an Irving Berlin revue as early as 1915.

Soon thereafter she was making records for Victor, introducing such standards as "After You're Gone," "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "I Ain't Got Nobody."

Harris was successful because she was good, and moreover her voice was well suited to recording, with clear diction, lovely tone, and accurate intonation. She also had a personal quality that was well ahead of its time during a period when many singers developed a trumpet-like characteristic so they could be heard in the back of a theater.

Today, as a companion to a George Gershwin collection from Lee Wiley on my main blog, we have three Gershwin songs that Harris recorded in the 1920s.

The first was unfamiliar to me, and I suspect will be to most others: "Nashville Nightingale," which dates from 1923. This was before George was writing regularly with his brother Ira; the song has lyrics by Irving Caesar that trade on the usual Southern clichés complete with stereotypical language. If you can put that aside, you'll find that Harris sings the piece convincingly.

Sources differ on the genesis of the song. Some say it was heard in the short-lived revue Nifties of 1923, but the Internet Broadway Database does not list it in the songs from that show's opening night. It may have been cut before the opening or added during the six-week run. Later, the song was heard in the 1927 West End revue Shake Your Feet.

The next number, "Somebody Loves Me," is far more famous. It comes from 1924, when it was heard in that year's George White's Scandals. Gershwin worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on the song. Harris' Brunswick recording is first class.

Both these recordings were made by the acoustic process, with its limited frequency response. Even so, they are very listenable, in large part because Harris' voice recorded so well.

The final item, "The Man I Love," was written by the Gershwin brothers and remains one of their best-known numbers. As I note in my Lee Wiley post, "For such a famous song, it had the dubious honor of being cut from Lady, Be Good, inserted in Strike Up the Band, which closed out of town, and rejected for Rosalie." Although the piece was written in 1924, it wasn't until 1927 that the recordings started to flow. SecondHand Songs lists Harris' as the first, although versions by such fine vocalists as Annette Hanshaw and Vaughn De Leath came out at about the same time.

Harris' disc is fully satisfying, enhanced by the electrical recording process with its wider frequency response. The singer is accompanied by the unusual combination of violin, guitar and piano; the violin sounds like it might actually have been a viola.

The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists 167 sides by Harris, all of which were done before 1931. She appeared on American radio in the early 1930s, then was on radio in England for a brief time before retiring from the business. She died in a fire aged 48.

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