Denny Zeitlin
‘Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin’
Sunnyside Records

I never thought I would hear “By Strauss” twice in the same month — in new performances, at least — and by two of the finest living jazz pianists, no less. It’s one of George and Ira Gershwin’s rarer standards, and their most notable waltz. In fact, when Ehud Asherie announced a few weeks ago, in the middle of a splendid Monday evening trio set at Dizzy’s, that his next tune was going to be a Gershwin waltz, everybody in the house knew there was only one song that it could possibly be. “By Strauss” is also a highlight of “Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin,” the excellent new solo album from Denny Zeitlin.

Yet some might consider this more surprising: I tend to think of Mr. Zeitlin, who was 80 when he recorded “Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin” in 2018, as more of a cutting edge postmodernist, and Mr. Asherie, 43, as more of a traditional player. Where Mr. Zeitlin is likely to go modal or freeform, Mr. Asherie is more likely to go stride or ragtime.   Yet Mr. Asherie’s arrangement of “By Strauss,” which he recorded on his Trio album “Music Makes Me’ and also with saxophonist Harry Allen on “For George, Cole, and Duke,” is much more overtly “modern” — at points he goes into 6/8, and uses “Valse Hot,” Sonny Rollins’s iconic framing of a bebop head in 3/4 time — as a countermelody.

Conversely, the interpretation by Dr. Zeitlin — yes, he is also a professor of psychiatry at the University of California — is rapturously tender and melodic. As he notes in the booklet, the song was most famously performed as a burlesque, a kind of sarcastic slap in the face to those old fuddy-duddies who preferred ancient Strauss waltzes to the more up-to-date music of Gershwin and his contemporaries. This must be a rare example of a modern musician challenging convention in such a fashion; it’s the opposite of a parody: It’s taking a funny song and making it sweet and romantic.

Dr. Zeitlin’s new Gershwin album is the latest in his series of solo recitals that has so far included collections of music by Wayne Shorter (“Early Wayne,” 2016) and Miles Davis (“Remembering Miles,” 2019). Dr. Zeitlin starts with familiar Gershwin melodies and interprets them in a way that’s playful, and yet respectful; he never trashes the tunes or distorts them, or throws in so many quotes that one forgets what the original tune is. I’ve always regarded “The Man I Love” as one of the Gershwins’ more classically styled, rhapsodic pop tunes; here, Dr. Zeitlin makes it sound as if it had been written for “Porgy and Bess” and shows what it has in common with that opera’s introduction.

Sometimes, though, Dr. Z starts a track by dancing around the tune, and doesn’t coax it out of hiding until he feels good and ready, as on the opener, “Summertime.” It almost sounds like warm weather waiting for the spring thaw: First there’s a kind of out-of-focus improvisation; we’re not exactly sure where it’s going, but a few minutes in, the familiar notes of the “Porgy and Bess” lullaby make their presence felt like flowers popping through the ice. 

“Fascinating Rhythm” is perhaps even more literal. In 1924, this tune was a model of a Tin Pan Alley song that incorporated the very latest in jazzy syncopation; nearly a hundred years later it becomes even more of a rhythmic manifesto.  

Here, Dr. Z takes the Gershwins at their word: He starts playing the tune very fast, as indeed it was first heard, but then he slows down and crisscrosses the tune with Tatum-like runs, and takes it through a series of variations and embellishments. He stretches the melody out, speeds it up and slows it down as if he were playing with silly putty.  

Yet in titling the album “Crazy Rhythm,” Dr. Zeitlin is perhaps enjoying another joke. That title refers to a 1928 show tune, with lyrics by Gershwin’s one-time collaborator Irving Caesar and a melody credited to veteran composer Joseph Meyer and bandleader Roger Wolfe Kahn.  “Crazy Rhythm” is frequently confused with the Gershwins’ “Fascinating Rhythm” and “I Got Rhythm,” and the lyrics are very similar to the former.

In both songs, the concept of rhythm is anthropomorphized as a sentient entity who won’t leave the hapless protagonist alone; in the first, he pleads, “Fascinatin’ rhythm, won’t you stop pickin’ on me?” and in the second, he insists, “Crazy rhythm, from now on, we’re through!” Then too, I hope that a song — which isn’t even included on this album since it isn’t a Gershwin number — would be the only way that a professor of clinical psychiatry would describe something OR SOMEONE as “crazy.”