Between the wars, one of Hollywood's favourite failsafe heart-tuggers concerned the aspiring clean-cut composer who, when not agonising over his "tenement symphony," willingly supported 17 younger brothers and sisters by pounding hot rhythms on a saloon piano by night and working on the docks by day. He never seemed to get tired, angry or dirty!
Inevitably, after overcoming an illness which paralysed both hands, a trumped-up murder rap, and the advances of a society strumpet, and winning the world heavyweight boxing championship (his blind girlfriend needed the money for her operation), our hero gets to play Carnegie Hall whilst his bad-seed brother does an about-face and becomes a priest.
This assortment of 14 self-composed solo piano studies is often evocative of the kind of rhapsodic romanticism that the would-be Gershwin tinkled in between the brash Busby Berkeley Broadway production sequences.
The attraction of this Attraction's neo-classical solo debut seems to be for those young students who aspire to side one of Jarrett's Koln Concert whilst still failing to master "Kitten On The Keys."
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