New Book Alert: Rhapsody by Mitchell James Kaplan; Lilting Jazzy Historical Fiction About Kay Swift, Brilliant Musician, Composer, and George Gershwin's Mistress

 New Book Alert: Rhapsody by Mitchell James Kaplan; Lilting Jazzy Historical Fiction About Kay Swift, Brilliant Musician, Composer, and George Gershwin's Mistress

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: The cliche "Behind every great man is a great woman" is outdated and demeaning especially when said woman is in the same field as the man. How many know that Zelda Sayres Fitzgerald wrote a novel called Save Me The Waltz and was a Surrealist artist? While many might know that Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote Gift From The Sea, a spiritual and meditative series of essays that are considered a precursor to the environmental movement, few know that she was also an accomplished aviator and was the first woman in the United States to receive a glider pilot's license. 

Now also take the example of Katherine Faulkner "Kay" Swift (1897-1994).  She was a performer and composer of popular and classical music and was the first woman to score a hit musical completely. In fact, that musical, Fine and Dandy has produced several jazz standards including "Can't We Be Friends?" that are still performed to this day. Oh yes and her lover was also a noted composer of popular songs. You might have heard of him, George Gershwin.

Mitchell James Kaplan's historical novel, Rhapsody, brings Swift out from being an afterthought or a footnote in Gershwin's history and allows her to claim her own history. It is a beautiful lilting novel that is like a good jazz tune: independent, smooth, and unforgettable.

Swift was born to a family that included her music critic father, Samuel Shippen Swift who died when she was young. She was trained as a classical musician and composer at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Juilliard School.) She played with the Edith Rubel Trio, a classical trio. During a performance she met her future husband James Paul "Jimmy" Warburg, a banker and poet. The two married and had three children before Swift met Gershwin in 1925.

The two engaged in a long term affair. 

Swift was a musical advisor during his many productions and it was during their romance that Fine and Dandy was produced. Warburg also benefited artistically from Swift's interest in popular music by becoming Fine and Dandy's lyricist, under his pseudonym, Paul James. Swift and Warburg divorced in 1934 and Swift and Gershwin continued their relationship (though never married) and remained together until Gershwin's death in 1937.

Swift continued to work after the death of her lover. She and Warburg contributed songs to the musicals, The First Little Show and The Garrick Gaieties while they were still married. In 1934, Swift composed Alma Mater, a ballet for choreographer George Balanchine which was Balanchine's first original work with an American setting.

After Gershwin's death, Swift and his brother, Ira collaborated to complete and arrange his unfinished works such as Sleepless Night. 

Swift was also staff composer for Radio City Music Hall, wrote music for the Rockettes, provided the score for Cornelia Otis Skinner's one woman show, Paris '90', and wrote the book, Who Could Ask For Anything More? based on her second marriage to rancher, Faye Hubbard. (Who Could Ask For Anything More? was made into the movie, Never A Dull Moment starring Fred McMurray and Irene Dunne). 

Swift continued to transcribe, annotate, arrange, and perform Gershwin's music until her diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 1991 and death in 1993.

Kaplan's perception of Kay Swift is of a woman in love not just with Gershwin but with music. In fact, her romance with Gershwin is seen as more than a dalliance to satisfy carnal pleasures. It's a more emotional bond shared by two people who love music.

Swift's first encounter with Gershwin expresses that love beautifully. She hears him perform his piece, Rhapsody in Blue. She recognizes the sadness, exhilaration, and emotion expressed in the composition. Swift sees in Gershwin a soul mate and one with whom she can share a mutual language of music. 

Most of the book shows Swift at the forefront of Gershwin's most famous works. She and Warburg attend a performance of Lady Be Good (which coincidentally also features in another book that I am reviewing, Lady Be Good: The Life and Times of Dorothy Hale by Pamela Hamilton). He experiments with works like the American ballet, An American in Paris. 

Swift is supportive as Gershwin travels on his own to South Carolina, a trip that proves fruitful when he becomes fascinated with the novel, Porgy and the Gullah dialect of the African-American South Carolina community. The results are his magnum opus, Porgy and Bess which flopped in his lifetime but became a posthumous success and is still performed regularly on stage. (Constantly aware of the immense talent of African-American performers and concerned that any subsequent producers would try to recreate Porgy and Bess in blackface, Gershwin's will insisted that any performance of his musical featured only black performers. While Porgy bears some controversy because of Gershwin's authorship, it has also received praise for his understanding and support of the African-American community.) 

Swift also is on hand as he creates music for lighter musical comedies like Girl Crazy and Shall We Dance and that he harbors no distinction between his serious highbrow works and his lighthearted affairs. He quotes his friends Louis Armstrong and F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Why only fluffy entertainment or high art? Can't a great chef grill a burger once in a while?"

Gershwin's music and attention also propel Swift into a richer, more creative professional life. Before she met Gershwin, she was strictly interested in playing classical music, considering popular music predictable and trite. After she meets Gershwin, Swift sees popular music through different eyes and appreciates the emotion and work that composers and lyricists put into these memorable tunes.

When she plays Gershwin's music, Swift puts her own touches and improvisations making them her own. She also begins playing her own musical pieces that come into her head. Fine and Dandy ends up being an excellent lighthearted musical and is praised for its jazzy songs. Her composition, Alma Mater, combines inspiration from Ravel and Stravinsky to make her own work.

It's clear that Swift has an immense talent but not much opportunity to pursue it. Gershwin ends up being a catalyst for Swift to pursue her talents to independence and success.

Besides Gershwin, Swift meets many other people whose creative pursuits inspire her to put herself forward. People like Alexander Wollcott, Duke Ellington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Nadia Boulanger, Arthur "Harpo" Marx, Maurice Ravel, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Dorothy Parker, Fred and Adele Astaire, Eddie Cantor, and George Balanchine. (Oddly enough even though they traveled in similar circles, Rhapsody does not mention Dorothy Hale nor does the book, Lady Be Good mention Swift.) It's not just Gershwin that influences her, it's also these other people who inspire Swift to express herself freely through her music. 

This love is not shared with Warburg. Kaplan's writing doesn't turn Warburg into a bastard or irredeemable. He is more nuanced than that. He is a commendable lyricist and doesn't mind "sharing" his wife, having affairs of his own as well. Warburg is also seen as a victim of antisemitism being derided by Henry Ford as a "Jewish banker" and can see Hitler's tyranny even before it officially begins.

Warburg just operates on a different level from Swift and this creates a distance between them that continues to grow. He doesn't share her love of music or performing. Gershwin however shares that love of music, making him her soul mate. Gershwin and Swift share the same passion for music and bring out that passion in each other.

People reading Rhapsody will know about George Gershwin going in but once the book is closed they will come to understand Kay Swift. This is the perfect book to make Swift move to center stage.