UHF No 70 (Net).indd - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

already-famous Al Jolson
sings it in his Capitol Revue.
The song is recorded by
Columbia the following
year and will sell a million
copies in its fi rst year. Its
success sweeps the planet,
and it is played on the
radio, on the stage, in the
music hall, and even in the
living room. At any family
or friendly get-together,
there is always someone
with a fi ne voice ready to
imitate the popular singer:
the lights are turned down
low, he smears his face
with bootblack, and he
goes into Swanee. In the
half light you see only the
white gloves and the roll of
the eyes. The effect never
misses.
In his early twenties,
George Gershwin earns
$10,000 in the fi rst year for
that song alone.
The appearance of the
phonograph and the radio revolutionizes
the music industry in the early 20’s, as
will the talking pictures not long after.
Gershwin meets the dance producer,
George White, known for his fl air for
fi nding talent. He includes six Gershwin
songs in George White’s Scandal of 1920.
It is only the beginning. Two years later
White includes eight Gershwin songs
in the new version of his show. Among
them: I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise.
The song will be reused in the 1951 fi lm
An American in Paris, where it is sung by
Georges Guétary.
On the same evening as the premiere
of the 1922 show, Gershwin presents
a mini-opera, Blue Monday, a slice of
American life set to jazz-inspired music
with a touch of ragtime. The audience is
lukewarm, though the next day one critic
calls it “the fi rst glow of a new American
musical art form.”
The elite crowd gravitates about
Greenwich, and the East Side beckons.
There Gershwin meets Charlie Chaplin,
Jascha Heifetz, Groucho Marx, the
Astaires and Douglas Fairbanks. George
seems unmannered in this tony company.
He boasts of frequenting brothels
Gershwin (at the piano) rehearsing for Rosalie, with fellow
composer Sigmund Romberg (behind him), and performers
Jack Donahue and Marilyn Miller.
and he greets ladies with a cigar clenched
between his teeth. His social shortcomings
are noted by one of his admirers,
jeweler Jules Glaenzer, who undertakes
to show George more worldly ways.
Gershwin takes note of the comments
of this person who clearly admires him
and considers him a friend. He is soon
elegant in both speech and dress.
Sophisticated jazz
Gershwin’s muse is tireless. He turns
out six songs a day “to get them out of
my system,” as he says. In April 1923
in London, he launches his musical
comedy The Rainbow. In November, he
accompanies at the piano the Canadian
mezzo-soprano and much admired classical
recitalist, Éva Gauthier. An apostle
of Poulenc, Milhaud, Stravinsky and
Bartok, she is a friend of Ravel, to whom
she introduces Gershwin. Eclectic and
bold, she champions the cause of modern
music, as she will do until her death in
1958. At New York’s Aeolian Hall, she is
accompanied by Gershwin as she sings
Purcell, Bellini, Bartok and Schoenberg,
to which she adds songs by Gershwin and
Kern. She is the fi rst classical singer to
incorporate jazz in a classical
recital. The audience, taken
aback at fi rst, applauds warmly
at the end.
Which brings us to the
Rhapsody in Blue.
It is a smash hit at its premiere
on February 12, 1924 in
that same Aeolian Hall. The
evening, organized by famed
bandleader Paul Whiteman,
is billed as “an experiment in
modern music.” In Whiteman’s
mind it is the realization
of a dream to which he
is convinced Gershwin holds
the key: giving jazz the status
of serious music. Whiteman
has not only commissioned
the work, but also pays Hugh
C. Ernst a goodly sum to write
a text for the program on the
necessity of proper instrumentation
to improve American
music. In the audience on
that evening are a number of
sophisticated music luminaries
and composers, such as Rachmaninov,
Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and
Leopold Stokowski.
The program is long, with Gershwin’s
piece at the very end. Before the concert
is over some audience members grow
restless and start to leave, when the long
and troubling clarinet glissando literally
freezes them in their tracks.
On stage there is tension. Gershwin
has not had time to complete the work,
and he has left blank the solo piano parts.
He has simply told Whiteman that he
will nod when it is time for the orchestra
to come in again. One can imagine the
exaltation of the composer, not to mention
the bandleader, and to understand
their relief when the piece ends and
they are rewarded by an ovation. The
Rhapsody in Blue has been consecrated,
and Gershwin has become legend.
It is only a few days later that he will
fi ll in the missing piano part on his score.
The following summer he will “record”
the Rhapsody on a reproducing piano (see
Record Reviews in this issue).
It is bold and full of energy, with a
blues fl avor and a clear jazz infl uence,
written in a single movement for piano
and orchestra, orchestrated by Ferde
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 59
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