How's the folks? What's new?

This has bothered me for maybe 40 years now. In the Gershwin song “The Babbitt and the Bromide,” there is the line, “Ta-ta, olive oil, goodbye.”

What?

Last night I read in Michael Feinstein’s new book that he too had thought this had something vaguely to do with Popeye, but that Ira, whom he worked for, told him that in the twenties, olive oil was a slang version of au revoir. Aha!

Here's some decent performers giving the song a try:



Of course, completists want the originators of the song to perform it. No video here, alas.



If you’re a digger, you can find recordings of Fred and Adele with George himself playing accompaniment. If you happen to be a piano player (and maybe even if you're not), listening to George play is mesmerizing.



There aren’t a lot of extant recordings of George playing, unfortunately. There are piano rolls, but I get the feeling that some of those are sort of multiple-tracked, to use a modern metaphor. I mean, not even Gershwin could play that many notes at once. Although maybe I'm wrong: if anyone could, it would be him. And there’s some scratchy recordings of radio performances and a Porgy rehearsal and maybe a couple of other items I can’t recall offhand. This set looks like a good, available collection of it.

So why am I bringing this up now? What does this have to do with debate? Well, nothing, I guess. But if you come into the tab room and wonder what that music is, this might be of some help.