Description
Chappell & Co., Inc., Published 1937. Sheet music, 5 pp.; 32 cm; plate G-21-4; pictorial cover in teal, black, and cream showing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, each with a dog.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
14
Turn the pages with the arrows, keyboard, or a swipe.
Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Good condition. Half-inch splits at the head and foot of the spine fold; mild shelf wear and soiling, with some color loss along the edges and spine. Interior pages mildly toned; mild soiling to the back cover. Otherwise unmarked. Introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 RKO musical Shall We Dance, the only Astaire-Rogers film scored by George and Ira Gershwin. In the picture Astaire dances it as a brief comic tap solo, rehearsing to a phonograph record that sticks mid-number. The score was the Gershwins' last complete work for film: George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, two months after the film's release, at the age of thirty-eight. The back cover carries musical incipits for all six songs from the film: They All Laughed; They Can't Take That Away From Me (posthumously nominated for the 1937 Academy Award for Best Original Song); (I've Got) Beginner's Luck; Let's Call the Whole Thing Off; Wake Up, Brother and Dance; Slap That Bass. As an individual sheet, Beginner's Luck is markedly scarcer than its companion standards, which were reprinted for decades; this brief comic number saw only its 1937 printing and no later reissue.