Gershwin, George, originally Jacob Gershvin 1898-1937
US composer

Born in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he studied piano as a boy, published his first popular song at the age of 14 and left high school to work for Jerome H Remick and Co., a Tin Pan Alley music-publishing company. In 1920 he had his first hit with 'Swanee', recorded by Al Jolson, and he began to compose songs for Broadway reviews. In 1924 he wrote his first successful musical comedy, Lady Be Good, collaborating with his brother Ira Gershwin, a brilliant lyricist who was to be his partner in songwriting until his death. In the 1920s and early 1930s he scored a series of hit musicals, including Of Thee I Sing (1931), and in the process produced numerous classics of US popular song, such as 'Someone to Watch Over Me', 'Embraceable You' and 'I Got Rhythm'. He also wrote songs and scores for motion pictures, notably several screen musicals with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In 1924 a commission from the conductor Paul Whiteman led to his composition of Rhapsody in Blue, a concert work combining Romantic emotionalism and the jazz idiom with unusual success, and this was followed with the Concerto in F (1925) and An American in Paris (1928), exploiting the same forces. His and Ira's black opera, Porgy and Bess (1935), was commercially unsuccessful when it was first staged but has won worldwide popularity. At the age of 38, at the height of his powers, he died of a brain tumour. Gershwin, who described jazz as 'a very powerful American folk-music', showed genius in his innovation of 'symphonic jazz' in his blithe dexterity with modern popular song and musical comedy, and he was influential in winning recognition of the legitimacy of US popular music.

Bibliography: David Ewen, George Gershwin (1970)