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THE S O U T HERN ISRAELITE
Childhood of a Composer
How George Gershwin, King George The First of Jazz Met Music
By ISAAC GOLDBERG
The smiling irony of George Gershwin’s
career begins with his birth, on Septem
ber 26, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. For,
whatever else is to be discovered in Gersh
win’s ancestry, one can unearth no traces
of musical talent. No Talmudic geniuses
blossom on his family tree; no wits sharp
ened by involved and erudite commenta
ries upon the Scriptures. No cantors.
The following day, in Brooklyn, was
born a child who was christened Vincent
Youmans. . . . Irving Berlin was ten years
old; Rudolf Friml, fourteen, and still twen
ty-two years away from the United States;
Will Handy was twenty-five; Charles K.
Harris, about thirty-one; Paul Dresser,
ten years the senior of Harris. ... A fel
low by the name of Theodore Dreiser was
writing articles for the magazines on the
importance of the barrel-organ in popular
izing sheet music. He ought to know, for
he is Dresser’s brother, and had helped
in making On The Banks Of The Wabash,
two years before. . . . Deems Taylor and
Jerome 1). Kern were thirteen years old;
Romberg was eleven, and would not see
these shores until 1909. . . . Victor Her
bert, in 1898, at the age of twenty-nine,
was appointed conductor of the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra; during that year he
wrote THE FORTUNE TELLER, and
three ether light operas. . . . Ferdie Grofe
was minus four years old, and Zez Con-
frey minus seven. Henry Cowell would not
appear on the scene for nine years; Aaron
Copland, a Brooklynite, and George An-
theil, from “over on the Jersey side”,
would wait two, and Dick Rodgers, four.
De Koven born in the same year as Her
bert, had been famous for Robin Hood
since 1890. . . .
Ma Gershwin still retains suggestions
of the striking beauty that was hers as a
girl. This she has passed on to her daugh
ter. Rose B rusk in had come to New York
from St. Petersburg; her future husband
had followed from the same place and
asked her hand in marriage. They were
joined in wedlock in New York City on
July 21, 1895; the bride was sixteen years
of age.
“My mother’s father”, recalls George,
“was a furrier. My paternal grandfather
was some sort of inventor; his ingenuity
had something to do with the Czar’s guns.
As for my father, he went to an opera
occasionally, as most fathers do. He could
sing fairly, and could whistle even better.
He used to give excellent imitations of a
cornet, and could coax music out of the
silliest contraptions, such as combs and
clothespins and pencils. But this was the
extent of his musicality. As for my mother,
she’s what the mammy writers write
about, and what the mammy singers sing
about. But they don’t mean it; and I do.”
The line of Gershwin, then, was one
rather of commercial acumen than of ar
tistic dedication. Perhaps this helps to
George Gershwin, the composer of
Rhapsody in Blue, is recognized as Ameri
ca’s most interesting composer. Through
this article, by Isaac Goldberg, eminent
man of letters, you are permitted to look
at the childhood of America’s King of
Jazz. This personality sketch is part of a
book, “George Gershwin, A Study in Amer
ican Music, Isa-c Goldberg.” The publish
ers have graciously consented to the pub-
lication of this unusually interesting ex
tract.
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account for the directness of George’s mu
sic; for his temperamental indifference
to musical saccharine; for a certain spirit
of satire and sophistication that very early
begins to sing from his pages. If there
was nothing saliently musical in his an
cestry, neither were there any indications
in his own childhood that he was to grow
up into a musical prodigy. It was not until
he had reached the age of confirmation
that his household was to know what a
piano—on the installment plan—looked
like.
Ma Gershwin, though very loving, never
pestered her children with excessive sur
veillance. She was set on having them
educated. . . . Later, she would oppose
George’s desire to become a musician.
She didn’t want a son of hers to become
a $25 per week piano-player. Yet when
George was to determine upon the step
from high-school to Remick’s, her resist
ance would crumble.
George, as he himself will remind you,
was the rough-and-ready, the muscular
type and not one of your sad, contempla
tive children. He was a merry nature,
always on the go. He was the athletic
champion of his gang. His real keyboard
was the sidewalks—and, even more, the
pavements—of New York; his family had
moved across the Brooklyn Bridge when
he was but a tot. Here he reveled in
games of “cat” and hockey; here he
achieved his first pre-eminence as the
undisputed roller-skate champion of
Seventh Street. Already he was George
the First.
The clatter of rollers over asphalt. .
The din of the elevated overhead. . . . The
madness of the traffic below ... the
cracked tones of the hurdy-gurdy. . . . The
blatant ballyhoo of the honky-tonk. . . .
The blare of the automatic orchestra as
the merry-go-round traced its dizzy cir
cles through Coney Island’s penny ‘ para
dises. . . . The plaintive wail of the street
singer acioss the obligato of a scraping
fiddle. . . . These were the earliest rhythms
that sound not only from his first hits
but fi om his most ambitious orchestral
compositions. It is young New York, young
America, seeking a voice for its holiday
spirit, its crude exaltations.
On the whole, Gershwin as a child heard
little music. Aside from the songs at
school he recalls two or three concerts at
the Educational Alliance on East Broad
way. Coney Island and the carrousels con
tributed their squealing melodies. “One of
my first definite memories goes back to
the age of six. I stood outside a penny
arcade listening to an automatic piano
leaping through Rubinstein’s melody in F.
The peculiar jumps in the music held
me rooted. To this very day I can’t hear
the tune without picturing myself outside
that arcade on One Hundred and Twenty-
Fifth Street, standing there barefoot arid
in overalls, drinking it all in avidly.”
George’s childhood, since he grew up in
the early 1900’s, so far as unconscious
musical influence was concerned, was sat
urated in the unsophisticated ballads of
those days. Morse, Von Tilzer, Charles K.
Harris, Van Alstyne . . . these were the
gods of the hurdy-gurdy, the stereopticon
singer and the “coon shouter”. Yet, out
of all these popular tunes, Gershwin re
calls but a few distinctly. Strike Up The
Band, Here Comes A Sailor, and Put Your
Arms Around Me Honey And Hold Me
Tight. . . . Where have vanished the saga
of Bill Bailey and his dusky fellow? Yes
terday it was the coon song, today it is
the blues. The Negro is still in the ascend
ant, for between the Spanish-American
War and the Great War that inclose, like a
parenthesis, Gershwin’s coming-of-age, lies
the evolution from ragtime to jazz.
Public school was much of a nuisance,
and home work—when it came—drudgery.
All that George remembers of school mu
sic, which was simply a nuisance within a
nuisance, are such ditties as Annie Laurie
and such belabored lesser classics as 1 he
Lost Chord. He was especially haunted by
the Sullivan song and by the Scotch tune,
“I’ll take the high road and you take the
low road.” (Loch Lomond.) A time would
come when the music of Sir Arthur Sulli
van would fascinate him, since in essentia!
spirit of jollity it so much anticipated his
own. But in his years at Public School 20,
and, later, at Public School 25, most tunes
“meant nothing in my young life”.
Nay, here is the crowning jest: In the
days of the roller skate and the hockey
stick it was George’s firm conviction that
there was something radically wrong with
youngsters who went in for music.
scrape away at the fiddle, to wear ou
one’s fingers on piano keys, was to be a
“little Maggie”, a sissy. Music was effem
inate; it was taught by women to women
and little girls, and if little boys submittwi
to instruction, they at once classified them
selves.
Was there a trace of envy in thi* hos
tility? The piano, in the opening ye ,,rs
this century, was not a household
sity; it was, especially in low r er New of •
much of a luxury and a symbol of
affluence. A second-hand upright
its way into the Gershwin home b* fj ’
chiefly, Mrs. (Please turn to Pa :