Former Beach Boy to complete Gershwin songs
Last Updated: Friday, October 9, 2009 | 3:05 PM ET
CBC News
Former Beach Boy Brian Wilson sings Sept. 30, 2004, in Minneapolis in support of Smile. His next album will be devoted to works by George Gershwin. (Jim Mone/Associated Press)The musical genius behind the Beach Boys has been asked to complete the work of a pop composer from earlier in the 20th century — George Gershwin.
Gershwin, a famed lyricist and composer who created works such as Porgy and Bess, An American in Paris and the Oscar-nominated They Can't Take That Away From Me, left behind dozens of unfinished songs when he died in 1937.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Gershwin family trust, administered by the composer's nephew Todd Gershwin, has approached former Beach Boy Brian Wilson to finish some of the songs.
Wilson was the lead songwriter for the '60s band, penning hits such as Good Vibrations and Little Deuce Coupe, but also the more sophisticated album Smile, which came out in 2004.
Wilson, 67, said he was "thrilled" at the prospect of working with the ghost of Gershwin, adding that one of his earliest memories was of hearing Rhapsody in Blue, a Gershwin jazz-classical composition.
Wilson plans to issue an album of Gershwin classics, with his own arrangements, next year that will include at least three new Gershwin songs.
"George for his time was a visionary," Todd Gershwin told the Times. "He certainly crossed genres and musical lines, tried things that hadn't been done before and Brian Wilson has done exactly the same thing."
