Lets Call The Whole Thing Off
Tomato, to-mah-to, potato-po-tah-to...no matter how you say it, you\u2019re on the Sound Beat.
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\nMost married couples admit to occasional, let\u2019s say\u2026differences of opinion. Seldom are those\u2026again, just differences of opinion, \xa0as productive as Ira and Lenore Gershwin\u2019s. Their opposing pronunciations of words like \u201ctomato\u201d and \u201cpotato\u201d led to the hit song \u201cLet\u2019s Call the Whole Thing Off,\u201d. It\u2019s a conversational tune written by Ira and his brother George.
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\nYou\u2019re listening to the silk-smooth vocals of The Ink Spots, who recorded this song for Decca in 1937. Since then, the song has been sung by artists like Billie Holiday and performed as a duet by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers performed it, on rollerskates mind you, in the 1937 movie Shall We Dance.
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\nThis episode was co-written by Syracuse University student Jill Comoletti as part of the Sound Beat Class Partnership. Find out more about the Partnership at soundbeat.org.