The other night watched "Best Foot Forward" featuring
the upbeat swing song "The Three B’s", performed by June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven and Nancy Walker. These three B's were "The Barrelhouse, the Boogie-Woogie and the Blues" not "Bach, Beethoven and Brahms" (that song would have been from another foot-themed musical entirely - "On Your Toes".)
Still reading Alex Ross -- in discussing Benjamin Britten, he mentions that Britten's mother
thought he might well become the fourth B.
Britten studied under Frank Bridge.
In America, he
lived at 7 Middagh Street, in Brooklyn Heights, over looking the Brooklyn
Bridge.
I'd like to imagine Britten with fellow residents of "February House" Peter Pears, W.H. Auden and Gypsy Rose Lee all going to see "Best Foot Forward" at a local movie house one evening in 1943.
What follow are Youtube clips of Britten's blues ("The Spider and the Fly") and his Boogie Woogie. Followed by someone named "the Boogie Woogie Kid" (Matthew Ball) doing barrelhouse... with a bust of Beethoven on his piano. (Well, I'm not positive it's Beethoven.)
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