The Life and Music of George Gershwin: Part 1
by Steven Gaber
We begin with a couple of pithy anecdotes depicting
Gershwin’s almost legendary self-assurance, which
some might call arrogance.
1)
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The pianist and neurotic wit Oscar Levant once
asked the composer in private, “Tell me, George, if
you had to do it all over, would you fall in love with
yourself again?”
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2)
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When George wondered if his music would be
played 100 years from then, Levant replied,
“It certainly will be."
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George Gershwin and New York were born the same
year and in the same place. It was in 1898 that the
independent city of Brooklyn et al were amalgamated
with
Manhattan
to
form
Greater
New
York
and to complete the five boroughs. On September 27,
1898 Jacob Gershwin was born in Brooklyn to Moishe
Gershovitz and Rosa Brushkin, recent Jewish immigrants
from urban Russia. Moishe arrived in New York
in 1890 and Rosa two years later. They became acquainted
and were married in 1895; Morris was 23
and Rosa 18. Jacob, whose name soon was Americanized
to George, was the 2nd child of four. Israel (Ira) was
the eldest, born 2 years before George, and Arthur and
Frances arrived later. Sometime between the birth of
Ira and George the family name became updated to
Gershwin.
Parents
Morris was a hard and energetic worker at many occupations
from shoemaking to managing a pool hall to
running a cigar store to working as a bookie. The family
frequently moved from place to place among various
neighbourhoods. Ira has estimated that the family lived
in twenty-eight different residences during his youth.
But it wouldn’t be accurate to judge the family as suffering
from the grinding poverty of tenement
life. Morris’ resume may have been lengthy, but he always
saw to it that the family was well supported. The
lyricist Yip Harburg, a family friend, wrote that
"compared to most of us, the Gershwins were affluent."
It was not a religious family. Only Ira was bar mitzvahed
and the family rarely attended religious services. In
George the Jewish heritage was present but hardly central.
The writer Carl Van Vechten wrote, “it’s absurd to
talk about Jewish tradition and George Gershwin. There
was nothing notably Jewish in him at all. Why, we never
thought of it.”
School was entirely unimportant to George. Ira was the
studious one in the family, the scholar. George cared
nothing for school and when he was fifteen he dropped
out of the High School of Commerce after just two
years.
Second in status only to a high school diploma for first
generation immigrants was ownership of a piano. Thus,
it was that a second-hand piano was lifted through the
second-floor window of the Gershwin apartment and,
given their nomadic lifestyle, was lowered and raised
many more times. It was for Ira, the eldest, but no one
was more pleased than he when his younger brother
sat right down and played a popular song of the day.
George began his first piano lessons from local instructors
when he was twelve, but it soon became obvious
that his skill level was well past their capabilities. Of
the working musicians he studied with, the most significant
was Charles Hambitzer who immediately recognized
that his “new student was a genius, without a
doubt. He is crazy about music and can’t wait until it’s
time to take his lesson.”
Remick
George embarked on a professional career when he
was just fifteen. He was hired as a song plugger for the
major music publishing firm of Jerome H Remick and
Co. In those pre-radio and silent movie days,
song pluggers were critical to the publishing industry.
They would make the rounds of watering holes, vaudeville
houses and cafés, hustling to convince entertainers
to include Remick’s songs in their act.
George never did much enjoy working as a song plugger.
He found it tedious and his young but already well-
developed ego did not value being condescended to by
the performers. He wrote little about his experiences at
Remick’s except to complain that it got on his nerves.
Because he was paid reasonably well and had nothing
better on offer, he remained there for three years. To
keep busy and make a few more dollars he took on a
job recording piano rolls, which are the earliest and
best surviving examples of his pianistic ability. He never
really stopped creating piano rolls.
The first complete and surviving instrumental composition
of George’s available to us is 1916’s “Rialto Ripples
Rag.” Remick published it in 1917, the only song
he managed to induce them to issue while he worked
there. It is an impressively driving and vibrant piano
rag. Forty years later it became the theme song of the
enormously creative and idiosyncratic Ernie Kovacs
television show.
Ziegfeld and Pennington
This supremely confident young man departed
Remick’s, certain that he could find his way as a composer.
He was eighteen and unemployed. But as we
will come to realise, Gershwin always managed to land
on his feet. His reputation as a composer remained
negligible but he already had achieved some prominence
as a first-rate pianist. While the immediate post-
Remick months were difficult, unhappiness for George
was always ephemeral.
In July 1917, he was hired by
Florenz Ziegfeld to serve as rehearsal pianist for his
new revue, “Miss 1917.” The score was by such high-
flyers as Victor Herbert and Jerome Kern and the book
was written by PG Wodehouse. The cast was an all-star
team of Vivienne Segal, Lew Fields, Irene Castle
and the dance team of Anne Pennington and George
White. To attest that excellent ingredients do not always
make a tasty stew, the revue was criticized as a
lamentable mishmash and bombed. Wodehouse later
wrote, “There was only one thing about ‘Miss 1917’
that is of historic interest. The boy who played the piano
at rehearsals was a young fellow named George
Gershwin.”
A Sunday night concert by Vivienne Segal
of George's unpublished songs brought him to the attention
of Max Dreyfus, who ran the musical publishing
company T B Harms, the largest and most prestigious
publisher of popular music. He hired Gershwin as a
staff composer with no obligation or expectations other
than to compose songs. An agreeable job description
and George remained with Harms as a publisher for
the rest of his career.
Young George could always find employment as a pianist.
He accompanied vaudeville stars such as Louise
Dresser and Nora Bayes on national tours. He became
a rehearsal pianist for a Jerome Kern musical. And
Ziegfeld once again selected him to be his rehearsal
pianist, this time for the 1918 “Ziegfeld Follies.”
George was now surrounded by superstars such as
Eddie Cantor, WC Fields, Will Rogers, Anne Pennington
and Marilyn Miller. He had reached the top of the pyramid
as a rehearsal pianist. Now his ambition was tightly
focused on a much greater peak.
Swanee
In 1919, George’s days as a mere rehearsal pianist
were forevermore over. Another childhood friend, the
lyricist Irving Caesar, and George deliberately sat down
together to write a smash song, writing it in the popular
two-step idiom and with a trendy Dixie theme. What
they had come up with was “Swanee.” Harms liked it
well enough to publish it instantly, but it languished for
a while until Al Jolson heard Gershwin play it a party.
Jolson’s current show, “Sinbad,” was an enormous
success, in large part due to Jolson’s blackface
reading of “Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie
Melody”. The tenor/baritone interpolated Gershwin’s
and Caesar’s song into “Sinbad” and recorded it for
Columbia on January 8, 1920. Suddenly George Gershwin
found himself exactly where he had expected he
would be: he was a composer of a major hit. It was not
only his first triumph but his biggest. The royalties began
to flow in. George was only twenty-one years old
but he had already made his mark and was ready to
take on the world. The deeply striving George Gershwin
craved success, fame, fortune and recognition and now
had attained all four of them. It was a remarkable debut.
If you invited George to a gathering or a salon you
would not need to worry about distractions. Barely into
the room, with a drink in his hand, George would sit
down to play the piano and might be there for the balance
of the party. This accomplished two significant
requirements for George: he loved entertaining people,
especially with his own songs, and it enabled him to
keep his distance from those who might want to befriend or flirt with him.
George was now free from agonising about whether or
not his gift would ever be acknowledged. It had taken
long enough, almost twenty years, which included his
infancy. George was always impatient to get where he
thought he should be. It was time now to turn his attention
and ambition to writing for the most dominant
social and lucrative genre of his time, the Broadway
revue. A “revue” refers to a theatrical show featuring a
group of performers showcasing a variety of musical
and comic forms. A story was optional.
Aarons
Alex Aarons, the youthful son of a well-known Broadway
impresario, aspired to set out on a Broadway producer's
career. Like George, he too was young and ambitious,
and only seven years older. It was the beginning
of a beautiful partnership. A man who had yet to write
his first score joined a man who had yet to produce his
first show. They remained associated for fifteen years,
merged soon enough with Ira Gershwin and Aarons’
partner Vinton Freedley.
In 1919, the year of “Swanee,” George wrote his first
score for Aarons, a comic revue, with lyrics by Buddy
DeSylva. “La, La, Lucille” was favourably reviewed and
the show was on its way to possible financial success
when it was closed down for a month by strike action of
the Actors’ Equity Association and had to be shuttered.
To save time and sanity we will dispense with the scrutiny
of the formulaic, predictable, and silly plot lines of
jazz era revues. You’re welcome.
Buddy DeSylva
Despite the forced closure of “La, La, Lucille,” George
once again dusted himself off and started all over
again. A dancer he had worked with a few years earlier,
George White, had decided to set up as a competitor to
Ziegfeld and “The George White's Scandals” emerged
in 1919. A contract was signed between the
two Georges in February 1920 for Gershwin to write
the music while Buddy DeSylva would write the lyrics.
White was so pleased that he renewed the contract
annually so that the team would eventually write for
five consecutive “Scandals”, from 1920 to 1924. With
some exceptions, George’s music for “Scandals” was
inferior when compared to his later work. It was written
on order and much of the content had to be constrained
by the rhythms and requirements of the revue
format. George later said that writing under pressure
was a valuable experience for him and he was able to
experiment with a variety of styles and harmonic innovations.
Stairway
The most highly regarded of all of George’s songs for
White is 1922’s “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.” This
spectacular number closed the first act and Gershwin
later recalled the pleasure given to an audience by two
circular staircases surrounded by Paul Whiteman’s orchestra
and occupied by fifty – count ‘em – fifty tall
women in spectacular gowns. It was also the first song
in which Ira played a role in the lyrics, helping out DeSylva.
The song has remained a standard in the Gershwin
repertoire ever since.
A version presented in “An
American in Paris,” the 1951 MGM musical, in which a
French stage singer, Georges Guetary, properly attired
in high hat and tails, ascended a colossal staircase,
likely reflects the manner in which the song was staged
by George White in the 1922 version of “Scandals”.
Gershwin was far too energetic and determined not to
solely rely on his work for George White. In 1921,
George and Ira, now a full-time lyricist for his brother’s
music, provided the score for a new musical, “A Dangerous Maid".
There is no surviving book and the score
was discarded but two of the songs were quickly interpolated
into an Ed Wynn vehicle called “The Perfect
Fool”, which enjoyed a long run and national tour. The
next year George, once again with Buddy DeSylva,
wrote some songs for “The French Doll”. That same
year he and lyricist William Daly collaborated on a
score for a musical with an unpromising chorus of eleven
rustic maidens and six farm boys. “Our Nell, a Jazzy
Melodrama Set in England” was as subtle as its title
and died an early death.
In 1923 George continued to receive assignments from
various sources. That year alone he provided music for
a silent Western film, “The Sunshine trail". He also contributed
a few lost songs to the Sigmund Romberg/
Marie Dressler revue, “The Dancing Girl”, He was sent
to London for the first of many Atlantic crossings to
write an original revue, “The Rainbow”. Commissions
kept on coming. Some more songs were written for a
couple of shows, “Little Miss Bluebeard” and “Nifties of
1923”. And he found time and energy to join once
again with Buddy DeSylva to write “Sweet Little Devil”.
Despite positive reviews, this show was not particularly
successful and the score was not considered one
of the show’s major assets. But George Gershwin was
now to be found in the Rolodex of Broadway impresarios
and his card was becoming creased and tattered.
Ira and George
A brief note on the collaboration between he and
Ira. Elton John cannot write a lyric and waits, perhaps
sadly sitting by his mailbox, until he receives a poem
from Bernie Taupin. Then he sits down and composes
a brilliant melody to the lyrics. The Gershwins did it the
other way round. George would write a song and Ira,
who always lived very closely nearby, would write the
lyric.
Occasionally
Ira
would
request
that
George extend or contract a musical line to fit what he
would consider superior wording and George would
usually do so.
The brothers were extraordinarily close
all their lives; Ira might have been the only human being
with whom George was relaxed and comfortable.
There was rarely, if ever, tension or hard feelings between
them. It was a remarkable relationship. One
advantage is that they both wholly concurred that
George was the greater in the partnership.
Kay and George
George’s disinterest in other close relationships was
also reflected in his marital status. Although there were
always women interested in the tall, well-built, handsome
and brilliant composer, they received little hope
in return of a possible marriage. The woman with
whom he is most closely connected, the composer Kay
Swift, even divorced her husband, an extremely
wealthy banker from a prominent family, in the hopes
that it would ease the way for George to propose. He
never did but they remained friends for the rest of his
life. There are some who think he might have been homosexual
but there is absolutely no evidence to support this.
There were few who would really have known
and none of them have spoken to us about it. It remains
unknowable and remains insignificant. My own
belief is that where there is no smoke, there is no fire.
The next year, 1924, saw the second defining moment
for George – the first was “Swanee” – when Paul
Whiteman commissioned for his February 12 Aeolian
Hall concert a composition that has become Gershwin’s
hallmark and one of the essential creations of all
twentieth century art. This, of course, is the iconic
“Rhapsody in Blue”. George was then unknown to the
classical music world, not yet having written anything
for it despite his enormous interest in “serious” music.
Whiteman facilitated George’s prospects by inviting to
the concert “the big guns in the highbrow musical
bracket” and such titans as Damrosch, Stokowski, Heifetz,
Galli-Gurci, and John McCormick were among the
sold-out audience for Whiteman’s inventive “An Experiment in Modern Music”.
There are many accounts about the swiftness with
which Gershwin completed his “Rhapsody”. It is known
that composing was not begun much in advance
and was completed only ten days before the concert
date. Whiteman’s arranger, Ferde Grofe, was promptly
seated at George’s apartment every day, orchestrating
under time pressure. It proved the sensation of the
concert and was greeted by tumultuous applause and
George as soloist received three curtain calls.
Paul Whiteman may not have been the King of Jazz but
he knew how to ride a hot hand and immediately
scheduled an energetic concert tour to take advantage
of the work’s enormous popularity. Throughout 1924
and 1925, the “Rhapsody” was performed to highly
appreciative audiences with George, mostly, as solo
pianist. In 1926 Whiteman, this time without Gershwin,
embarked
on
a
European
tour
to
perform
the “Rhapsody”, where it was received with delight and
ticket purchases. In short order young George Gershwin’s
“Rhapsody in Blue” became the preeminent concert
work of its time. The English music critic Ernest
Newman, who did not consider himself an admirer of
jazz, described the work as “a creditable first attempt
to do something bigger than jazz by a gifted young man
with an enviable facility in producing catchy, pungent
tunes”. The “Rhapsody” has never lost its exalted
place in the repertoire. The opening ceremony of the
1984 Los Angeles Olympics showcased Gershwin when
eighty-four pianists performed the “Rhapsody” on
eighty-four pianos. What could be more Los Angeles –
or Busby Berkelian - than that?
With the completion of their score for “Scandals
of 1924”, Gershwin and DeSylva’s exertions for George
White were concluded. Critics found their work for the
1924 edition increasingly conventional, uninspired and
commonplace. The clear exception is “Somebody
Loves Me”. The song’s verse, both novel and provocative,
reflected the contrast between the comfortable
“somebody loves me” and the regret of not knowing
“who”.
Continuing his remarkable year of 1924, Gershwin was
returned to England by Aarons and Freedley to provide
a few songs for the London musical, “Primrose”. This
time George did better in “Englishing it up” and the
show ran in London for 255 performances. His publisher,
Harms, put out a complete piano-vocal score making
it one of the best preserved of the early Gershwin
revues.
While in London, still in 1924, his producers arranged
for a meeting between George and Fred Astaire to discuss
a new Broadway musical for the fall. George and
Ira completed the score over the summer and titled it,
“Lady, Be Good!”
Fred and Adele
It was an enormous success, and the work ripened into
one of the quintessential American theatrical works of
the nineteen twenties. In addition to Fred and his sister
Adele, its cast also included Cliff Edwards and the
duo-piano team of Victor Arden and Phil Ohman. Improbably,
one of the Gershwins’ finest songs was
dropped from the show because it was viewed as too
subtle for a revue that emphasized manic stage movement
and fast-paced dialogue. The song was too brilliant
not to resurface later and take its place among
the most outstanding ever written. This was “The Man I
Love”.
Critics found the show demented, lunatic, hysterical,
and blissfully idiotic. These were accolades, not disparagements.
Opening on December 1 “Lady, Be Good!”
was relished by reviewers and audiences alike. While
the music was found exciting, the triumph of the evening
were the Astaire siblings, now recognized as musical-comedy
stars of the first magnitude. This was the
first George and Ira Gershwin show to have a full national
tour followed by a London run. It was the first
major theatrical success for the young, twenty-six year
old composer and his lyricist brother.
“Lady, Be Good!” contained two songs that have proven
enduring:
the
title
song
and
“Fascinating
Rhythm”. Fred and Adele were both much better
hoofers than vocalists but it was clear that Fred was
Caruso compared to Adele’s painfully thin voice.
George couldn’t and didn’t slow down in 1925. Early
that year, George collaborated with Buddy DeSylva and
Ira on a musical comedy, “Tell Me More”. The book was
judged undistinguished and unoriginal but the music
was
delicate
and
restrained.
The
cast
was judged “unworthy of the music” and the show
closed after 100 performances. A superior cast was
found for London and it ran for 262 shows there. The
entire production has since fallen into obscurity.
In the summer of 1925, George began work on his second
substantial composition for the classical concert
hall, which regrettably would be his only concerto. Walter
Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony
Society, commissioned the work. George was certainly
motivated to prove that he was more than just another
composer of revues. “Many persons have thought that
the 'Rhapsody' was only a happy accident. Well, I went
out to show that there was plenty more where that had
come from”. From the silence and isolation of a rural
cabin in upstate New York, he completed one movement
in August and the other two in September. He
was now confident in his ability to orchestrate his music
and did so himself. By the first week of November,
the “Piano Concerto in F” was ready.
Much more than the Rhapsody, the Concerto reflected
19th-century classical music traditions. The orchestration
was less conventional and included such untraditional
percussion instruments as the woodblock,
bells, slapstick and xylophone. It was first publicly performed
at Carnegie Hall on December 3, surrounded by
classical music by such as Gluck and Glazunov. The
mixed audience of classical music lovers and theatre/
jazz enthusiasts eagerly greeted the Concerto.
Debates began immediately as to whether or not this
new work represented an advance over the previous
year’s “Rhapsody”, or a step backwards. But within a
decade the “Concerto in F” found its place in the international
portfolio and has been performed and recorded by many principal orchestras of the world.
Tip-Toes
George’s aspiration was to be accepted as a serious
classical composer but he certainly comprehended
that Broadway, not Carnegie Hall, was where his meal
ticket was to be found. In December 1925 the team
from “Lady, Be Good!” was reunited with Aarons and
Freedley and Gershwin and Gershwin collaborating
once again. “Tip-Toes” was conceived as a vehicle for
Queenie Smith, a tiny ballet dancer who had relocated
from the Metropolitan Opera to Broadway. She was
given a sweetly exuberant score for this customarily
romantic farce. “It was a hopeful and expectant audience
that swarmed last night into the Liberty Theatre,
but not because Queenie Smith whirled about on her
toes or because Mr. Aarons was the producer. Their
major consideration was that George Gershwin wrote
the music”. And by this time Ira’s lyrics began to receive
substantial recognition and credit. The great lyricist
Lorenz Hart wrote to Ira, “Your lyrics gave me as
much pleasure as Mr. George Gershwin’s music…Such
delicacies as your jingles prove that songs can be both
popular and intelligent”. It ran for 194 performances
before what was becoming an expected national tour
and a successful invasion of England.
In 1926 George did not keep up the frenetic pace of
the previous two years, certainly not as measured by
numerical productivity. He continued to stretch his serious
side, writing “Five Preludes” for piano. He had attended
a debate between a minister and a contralto on
the question of, “jazz, the savage music of intellectual
and spiritual debauchery, should be outlawed”. The
contralto pleased the composer in the audience:
“When I die, play George Gershwin’s 'Rhapsody in
Blue' at my funeral”. The composer and the contralto
promptly agreed to collaborate on a concert that would
prove that jazz was “of sound musical value and worthy
of a place on any sober and dignified programme”. For
this concert he also composed and performed his
“Preludes for Piano.” Initially thought of as trifling and
sketchy, these were later published and have become
frequent additions to the solo piano repertoire.
Lawrence
1926 did see the creation of a major work for Broadway.
Specifically written for the English actress Gertrude
Lawrence, “Oh, Kay” was a production of Aarons
and Freedley and the Gershwin brothers with a book by
Guy Bolton and PG Wodehouse. The show received excellent
reviews, especially Ms. Lawrence, who is described
as “suavely gleeful and politely indiscreet with
a voice that was softly enticing”. Opening on November
8, it ran for 256 performances before a national
tour and then 214 additional shows in Ms. Lawrence’s
homeland.
“Oh, Kay” integrated book and score more compellingly
than any revue before had. It still remained for “Show
Boat” to demonstrate how the linking could be perfected.
Two songs stood out: “Do, Do, Do” and the superior
“Someone to Watch Over Me”, which was recorded by
George on Columbia 812-D a few days subsequent to
the opening. On this recording, you can hear him playing
in his own style as if he were at one of his parties.
Kaufman
1927 began for the Gershwin brothers with a collaboration
with George S Kaufman, “Strike up the
Band”. This seemingly brilliant team produced one of
the trio’s worst flops. Kaufman, a caustic satirist, said
he never entirely felt at home in musicals. As Ira wrote
about him, “Although Kaufman did not hate music,
even in musicals he regarded music as a necessary
evil”.
Tryouts went poorly with second act struggles,
star departures, and dwindling attendance. It closed
without ever reaching Broadway.
A couple of years later, the producer ripped up the
book and replaced Kaufman with Morrie Ryskind and
found a new cast. The fierce satire and Kaufman acidity
were reduced in the plot and the Gershwins made
their score livelier and funnier. It finally opened at the
Times Square Theatre on January 14, 1930. This time
“Strike up the Band” passably flourished and ran for
six months or 191 performances. The one hit from the
show was the title song. Because the profound “The
Man I Love” was once again scratched, the show
did not have two.
Funny Face
Following the failure of the 1927 version of “Strike up
the Band”, George and Ira returned to the more familiar
Aarons and Freedley and Fred and Adele. The
show was called, “Funny Face”. Once again previews
were seriously problematic: Richard Rodgers wrote his
wife,
“God
will
have
to
do
miracles
if
it’s
fixed”. This time, with six weeks of continuous
adjustments, with recasting, rewriting, rehearsing
and, finally, rejoicing, it led to a successful Broadway
opening. One number added to the score obligated
Astaire to make his first appearance in top hat and
tails,
fronting
a
similarly
attired
male
dance
group. Fred liked the look.
Three songs stood out from the score: “He Loves and
She Loves”, “The Babbitt and the Bromide” and the
classic, “’S Wonderful”. Ira spent the balance of his life
striving to get vocalists not to sing “It’s Wonderful” because
it ruined its rhythm. Among the unanimous reviews
of acclaim was one by Alexander Woollcott: “I do
not know if Gershwin was born into this world to write
rhythms for Fred Astaire’s feet or whether Astaire was
born into the world to show how the Gershwins’ music
can be danced”. Whatever the response, “Funny Face”
ran for 244 performances.
Works Consulted
- Feinstein, Michael. The Gershwins and Me. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2012.
- Hyland, William G. George Gershwin: A New Biography. Praeger, Westport, CT., 2003.
- New York Times Archives, October 2, 1979, p.1, The Doctor’s World: Gershwin’s Illness.
- Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. U. of California Press, Berkeley CA., 2006.
- www.gershwin.com
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