Here it is:
Being taken to see the film in 1959 or 1960 is what blew me away and opened my ears (and eyes) to the world of Gershwin. A few years later I became enamored of the 3-LP "complete" (not) Lehman Engel recording on Columbia. I then branched out to the "original cast" one on Decca, and finally got the movie soundtrack. I liked different aspects of all of these, but it was in discovering the RCA recording with Price and Warfield that I became obsessed. Finally, here were some truly great voices with truly competent conducting -- not that Previn was any slouch on the film in that regard, but here was Skitch Henderson of all people knocking it out of the park. My obsession resulting from that eye-opening 1960s recording remains alive and well to this day.
That was it for quite a while. I still have my beautiful first issue of the Mel Torme version, but I never really connected with it (I always think I should give it a new chance). I enjoyed the Lena Horne and Belafonte recording. I love the Gershwin-played and conducted excerpts. In the 1970s the Cleveland Orchestra released the first truly complete recording. It was musically stiff and bland, but I couldn't get enough of hearing all of that heretofore missing music. Then along came the Houston Grand Opera version which I think is still really wonderful.
I was never on the right coast at the right time to see the Met's production. (I might still have my rough off-the-air recording from around 1984 when KFAC in L.A. was transmitting the Saturday broadcasts. Ironically, that highly anticipated one suffered long dropouts -- which I called the station about as they were happening, and they were as distressed as the listeners were. You could do that in those days, dial a station and have your call picked up by the person at the controls and get immediate information.)
I had no interest in the recent notorious re-conceived Broadway version.
