George Gershwin made well over 100 piano rolls between 1915 and 1925. Although he had some reluctance to take up the piano after neglecting it for many years, he eventually realized the enormous profits to be made in addition to his work at the time as a Tin Pan Alley song-plugger and later a staff composer at Harms. He played many hits of the day (by
Jerome Kern, Harry Akst and
Irving Berlin) as well as his own compositions, and though the songs gathered here will be unfamiliar to most listeners,
Gershwin's performances are striking, thanks in part to the technology employed by Elektra/Nonesuch in the re-recording of these rolls on a nine-foot Yamaha Disklavier grand piano. ~ John Bush