Besides being a Jazzy tune that the musician himself wrote in 1918

Hi

I have tried to address your query by pointing out why the other options are incorrect.

Besides being a Jazzy tune that the musician himself wrote in 1918, Muggs Daley's hit song "Moonshining" was also recorded by many other bands in the 1970s, showing the song's timeless appeal.

(A) Besides being a Jazzy tune that the musician himself wrote Correct. The portion of the question that is not underlined makes it clear that the underlined portion must tell us what else Moonshining was, apart from being recorded by other bands. This is brought out nicely in this option.

(B) Besides a Jazzy tune with the musician himself writing it Since we are looking for something that Moonshining was, we need some form of "be", which is absent.

(C) Except a Jazzy tune being written by the musician himself "Except" does not indicate that that Moonshining was something in addition to what is described in the rest of the sentence, which is what we are looking for.

(D) Besides the instance of a Jazzy tune that the musician himself wrote "Besides the instance" is used to present an exception to a rule, while we are looking for a simple additional quality/state of being.

(E) Besides the fact of a Jazzy tune with the musician writing himself Same as (D). Additionally, "Besides the fact of a Jazzy tune" implies that Jazzy tunes, somehow, contain facts within or as part of them, which is absurd logic.

I am not sure why you suspect "being" to function as a gerund. In my view, "being" in the above sentence simply plays the role of a verb to convey the continuous tense form of "be" ie; Moonshining was and continues to be "a Jazzy tune that the musician himself wrote in 1918".

Hope this helps.

In this post https://gmatclub.com/forum/experts-topi ... 42299.html GMATNinja writes that being must be preceded by a form of to be for it to act as a verb