10/10/2010

The 75th anniversary of the first night of Gershwin's Porgy & Bess is celebrated on the song show via a spirited duet version I Got Plenty Of Nuttin' by Ray Charles & Cleo Laine and the original Bess - Anne Brown - singing Summertime. Russell announces the programme's search for our audience's favourite recorded duet performance and to illustrate this we hear Sarah Vaughan & Billy Eckstine's famous Passing Strangers, Bing Crosby & Al Jolson's Spaniard That Blighted My Life and a piano duo rarity by Clarence Williams & James P Johnson.

Tributes to Don "Rosie" Partridge and Eddie Fisher follow. Russell plays a Fisher hit from 1953 and follows it with songs by three of his wives - Debbie Reynolds (Aba Daba Honeymoon) Elizabeth Taylor (Send In The Clowns) and Connie Stevens (Blame It On My Youth) and the Rosie theme is extended with Alex Welsh's bands version of My Blushing Rosie and, finally, a Rosemary Clooney track with the Hi-Los from 1957.