Michael Feinstein is obsessed.
At least the cabaret singer’s paired manias — composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira Gershwin — are worthwhile.
This compulsion to collect comes in handy for Feinstein’s “The Gershwins and Me.”His personal history, built around 12 classic Gershwin songs, is adoringly decorated with copious visual material, much of it from Feinstein’s personal cache.
In fact, one could argue that the superabundance of Gershwin images doesn’t always enlarge the story he tries to tell. A few of those pictures — especially those of the author with random musical celebrities — could have been replaced by a useful index.
Feinstein’s special tie to the subject matter comes from the six years he spent as a young man working for and befriending Ira Gershwin and his emotionally erratic wife, Lee.
Footloose in Los Angeles, he was hired in 1977 to organize and catalogue the Gershwins’ record collection. He eventually charmed the couple with his knowledge and devotion. During his six-year stay, he also befriended their next-door neighbor, singer Rosemary Clooney. Feinstein and Clooney later sang together frequently.
Taking up one song per chapter — he recorded them for the inevitable CD that comes with the book — Feinstein recounts the history of the Broadway shows that spawned them, surveys various interpretations over the years and delves into the biographical contexts, not only of the brothers at the time of composition, but also of Feinstein’s later experiences with the music.
The “Me” of the title is not beside the point. In fact, a photo illustration of the Gershwin brothers and Feinstein reproduced on the book jacket places the author at the center of a sunburst, as if the book’s other two subjects were looking on as a boyish Feinstein tickles the ivories.
You see, Feinstein views himself as a preservationist — or perhaps revivalist — for the Great American Songbook. That might strike the casual reader as odd, since that canon of popular songs composed from the 1920s through the 1960s is never far from our ears these days.
Feinstien, however, takes his role very seriously. He carefully scans all versions of the songs for minor variations. He argues strongly for the original tempos, for instance, of selections like “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and “Embraceable You.” Yet, as he admits and the CD attests, the ballad versions work just fine for him.
He’s no purist. Rather, Feinstein wants the reader to take these ubiquitous lyrics and melodies as crucial cultural artifacts, worthy of intense research and even speculative analysis.
The 12 songs he highlights — including “Strike Up the Band,” “The Man I Love,” “S’Wonderful,” “They All Laughed,” “Love Is Here to Stay,” “I Got Rhythm” and “Someone to Watch Over Me — are aready deeply woven into our culture. They continue to appear in movies, over the radio and on the concert stage through countless renditions.
His one rescued gem here is the breezy “Who Cares” from the 1931 Pulitzer Prize-winning political musical “Of Thee I Sing.”
“It represents the heralding of a new style in music and lyric that is reflective of the era,” he writes, “as well as exhibiting a clear-eyed distillation of a beautiful economy of expression, perhaps mirroring the austerity of the times.”
His near-scholarly obsession is most compelling as he recounts the workings and reworkings of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the jazzy piece that secured George Gershwin a permanent place in the classical repertoire, and “Porgy and Bess,” the folk opera that continues to undergo radical reinterpretations, as recently as the past Broadway season.
A certain amount of celebrity gossip is expected from a book like this. Feinstein chimes in on Oscar Levant’s depression, George Gershwin’s sexuality, Lee Gershwin’s serial cruelty and Ira Gershwin’s vulnerability. His pen, however, is not dipped in poison. He forgives even if he does not forget.
In the end, Feinstein makes a reasoned case for the Gershwins’ legacy, placing particular emphasis on the composer he never personally knew.
“George’s influence was not only musical but cultural,” he writes. “He helped shape what people thought of when they thought of America.”