George Gershwin
Musician · 1898–1937 · Brooklyn, New York
Best known for
Composer
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist whose 1924 “Rhapsody in Blue” fused symphonic form with jazz vocabulary in a way that helped define American concert music, and whose long Broadway and Hollywood partnership with lyricist brother Ira produced “I Got Rhythm,” “Embraceable You,” “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and the opera Porgy and Bess. He died at thirty-eight of a brain tumor.
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- Born Jacob Gershwine on September 26, 1898, in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrants Morris and Rose Gershovitz.
- Taught himself piano on the family upright; took a few lessons from Charles Hambitzer in his early teens.
- Worked as a Tin Pan Alley song plugger for the Jerome H. Remick company beginning in 1914.
- Scored his first hit with the Al Jolson recording of “Swanee” in 1919.
- Composed “Rhapsody in Blue” in three weeks for Paul Whiteman’s Aeolian Hall concert of February 12, 1924; the work became one of the most performed American concert pieces of the twentieth century.
- Wrote “Concerto in F” (1925), “An American in Paris” (1928), and the Cuban Overture (1932).
- Wrote more than a dozen Broadway musicals with brother Ira, capped by the 1935 folk opera Porgy and Bess.
- Moved to Hollywood in 1936 to write film songs for Fred Astaire pictures, including “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.”
- Died July 11, 1937, in Hollywood after surgery for a brain tumor, at age 38.
