Bunny Berigan: I Can't Get Started

When Hollywood needed a hyperlink to the nostalgically seedy 1930s for Save the Tiger (1973) and Chinatown (1974), this track filled the bill. Ranking high among Swing Era trumpeters and even higher among jazz's legendary lushes, Bunny Berigan here displays both attributes, playing brilliantly and singing with a wistfulness achieved through years of marinating in bathtub gin. With Prohibition repealed, bootleg drinking's urgency had slackened to laid-back, law-abiding alcoholism. Bunny's slightly woozy vocal exudes just enough vapors to make us root for the deluded braggart and romantic flop of Ira Gershwin's lyric. Fine song; classic performance.