George Shearing, RIP

In 1949, George Shearing and Buddy de Franco first played a New York jazz club called The Clique, owned by Morris Levy. The pre-eminent jazzer of the time was Charlie "Bird" Parker, and Morris decided the rename the club Birdland in his honour later that year.

Shearing said initially there was not much special about the tiny club, with room for around 150 covers. But in 1952, Levy struck a deal with radio station WJZ to broadcast from the club, and he asked Shearing to record a song he'd found, as a theme tune. Shearing didn't like it, and offered to write one himself; Levy, true to form, said yes - as long as he got publishing rights.

According to Shearing's autobiography, "Lullaby of Birdland" didn't come easily, but it did come quickly. After weeks without inspiration, he jumped up in the middle of dinner one night, went to the piano, and wrote the whole thing in about ten minutes.

“Actually quite a lot of my compositions have come this way--very slow going for a week or so, and the finished piece comes together very rapidly, but as I say to those who criticize this method of working, it’s not that I dash something off in ten minutes, it’s ten minutes plus umpteen years in the business.”

Of the myriad recordings of the tune, Shearing's favourite version was by Erroll Garner. "I wonder why I didn’t write it that way--by which I mean I had a fairly brisk tempo in mind, whereas Erroll just took it very gently, he kind of lagged it along and scraped his way through it, so much so that you can almost hear the smile on his face as he’s playing".

There's Garner's influence in this version by Shearing performed live in 1987; and the Garner trick of inserting other tunes.

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George Shearing - Lullaby Of Birdland
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