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4 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. iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiii 1 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 :