I Can’t Get Started – 2021
Randy Brecker
The trumpeter and Emmet Cohen create a fresh version of the standard
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“I Can’t Get Started” was composed by Vernon Duke with lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and was introduced in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 where it was sung by Bob Hope and Eve Arden.
It might very well have been forgotten if Bunny Berigan had not adopted it and recorded a classic version in 1937.
It was later radically altered by Dizzy Gillespie in his 1945 version and has been a jazz standard for the past 80 years.
Randy Brecker, with pianist Emmet Cohen, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Kyle Poole, hints a little at the Gillespie version but infuses his performance with his own blazing double-time lines and blasts into the upper register.
-Scott Yanow
