At 15, George Gershwin left school to plug songs on Tin Pan Alley for $15 a week. Within twenty years he had written a stack of tunes that jazz musicians still play.
Gershwin was born Jacob Gershwine in Brooklyn on 26 September 1898. His first published song, in 1916, earned him 50 cents. Three years later Al Jolson heard him play “Swanee” at a party, took it into his show, and Gershwin had his first national hit.
On 12 February 1924 Paul Whiteman’s band premiered Rhapsody in Blue at Aeolian Hall in New York, and Gershwin became the composer people pointed to when they argued that jazz and the concert hall could meet. Later that year he and his older brother Ira had their first Broadway show together, Lady, Be Good! Ira, born in 1896, wrote the lyrics for most of the songs on this list.
Some Broadway writers kept their distance from jazz. Gershwin wrote with blue notes and syncopation built into the melody, which is one reason musicians took to his songs so quickly. One of them supplied the chord sequence behind a great many bebop tunes.
His career was short. He died in 1937 at 38, so everything here was written in a little over a decade, across Broadway shows, Hollywood films and one opera.
If you want the wider picture beyond these George Gershwin songs, our guide to the best jazz songs of the Great American Songbook is a good place to start.
1. “Oh, Lady Be Good!”
Lady, Be Good! opened on Broadway on 1 December 1924, starring Fred and Adele Astaire. The title song went not to the Astaires but to the comedian Walter Catlett, and the show ran for 330 performances.
Gershwin marked the sheet music “slow and gracefully”. Jazz players soon ignored that, and the tune has been played at almost every tempo since. It is a 32-bar AABA song in G major, with a melody that mostly steps downwards and then jumps back up by a sixth or an octave.
The recording that changed its life came in 1936, when producer John Hammond recorded a small group from Count Basie’s band in Chicago under the name Jones-Smith Incorporated. Basie took the first chorus and a young Lester Young took the second. Writing for JazzStandards.com, Chris Tyle put it this way: “the jazz world was introduced to another way of playing the tenor saxophone.”
Ella Fitzgerald had a hit with it in 1947, on a record with Bob Haggart’s orchestra built around her scat solo. She came back to it in 1959 for her Gershwin songbook, this time as a ballad arranged by Nelson Riddle.
Classic “Oh, Lady Be Good!” version: Jones-Smith Incorporated with Lester Young and Count Basie (single, 1936)
Modern “Oh, Lady Be Good!” version: Dee Dee Bridgewater (Dear Ella, 1997)
2. “The Man I Love”
Few standards had a harder start. The Gershwins wrote “The Man I Love” for Lady, Be Good! in 1924, but it was cut before the show opened. It went into Strike Up the Band in 1927, which closed during its tryout, then was dropped from the Ziegfeld show Rosalie in 1928.
According to JazzStandards.com, Gershwin’s friend Lady Mountbatten took a copy of the music back to Europe, and the song caught on in London and Paris before America. Marion Harris had the first US chart hit with it in 1927.
Musicians like it for the harmony. The A sections are in E flat major and the bridge moves into C minor, over a bass line that keeps descending under the melody.
Billie Holiday recorded a slow version with Lester Young in 1939. In December 1943 Coleman Hawkins doubled the usual tempo, with Eddie Heywood on piano, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Shelly Manne on drums. JazzStandards.com describes it as a treatment that surprised the jazz world.
Classic “The Man I Love” version: Coleman Hawkins Swing Four (Signature single, 1943)
Modern “The Man I Love” version: Herbie Hancock with Joni Mitchell (Gershwin’s World, 1998)
3. “Someone to Watch Over Me”
The Gershwins first wrote this as a fast rhythm number. George tried playing it slowly while working on it, and the two brothers kept the slower version.
It was introduced by Gertrude Lawrence in Oh, Kay!, which opened on Broadway on 8 November 1926. She sang it alone on stage to a rag doll. The critic Percy Hammond wrote that she “wrung the withers of even the most hard-hearted of those present.”
Lawrence’s own recording, with Tom Waring at the piano, reached number two in 1927. Jazz singers kept it alive as a ballad, and we included it in our list of the best jazz ballads.
Gershwin added an extra bar in places, so some phrases run to nine bars instead of eight, and the bridge carries an extra bar to lead into the last A section. That can catch out a band that is counting in eights.
Ella Fitzgerald recorded it in 1950 on Ella Sings Gershwin, a set of duets with the pianist Ellis Larkins. It’s a quiet record and less well known than her later songbooks, but many listeners prefer it.
Classic “Someone to Watch Over Me” version: Ella Fitzgerald with Ellis Larkins (Ella Sings Gershwin, 1950)
Modern “Someone to Watch Over Me” version: Samara Joy with Pasquale Grasso (Linger Awhile, 2022)
4. “Embraceable You”
George and Ira wrote “Embraceable You” in 1928 for East Is West, an operetta that was never produced. Two years later it went into Girl Crazy, where Ginger Rogers sang it in a dance routine staged by Fred Astaire.
Billie Holiday’s 1944 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2005. For many jazz fans, though, the version that counts is by Charlie Parker.
On 28 October 1947 Parker recorded it for Dial with Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter and Max Roach. He spends little time on the written melody and improvises from the start. Seven weeks later, on 17 December, he recorded “Quasimodo”, his own tune based on “Embraceable You”.
Joe Lovano closed his 2000 Blue Note album 52nd Street Themes, a nonet record built largely around Tadd Dameron’s music, with the song.
Classic “Embraceable You” version: Charlie Parker Quintet (Dial single, 1947)
Modern “Embraceable You” version: Joe Lovano (52nd Street Themes, 2000)
5. “I Got Rhythm”
Girl Crazy opened at the Alvin Theatre on 14 October 1930 with a pit band that included Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Dorsey and Gene Krupa. Gershwin conducted the first night himself.
“I Got Rhythm” was sung by Ethel Merman, who was making her Broadway debut. In her 1955 autobiography she wrote that she “held a middle C, in ‘I Got Rhythm,’ for sixteen bars” while the orchestra played the melody. Gershwin had first written the tune as a slow number for Treasure Girl in 1928.
For jazz musicians the important part is the chords. The song’s sequence, known as “rhythm changes”, sits under dozens of later tunes, including “Lester Leaps In”, “Salt Peanuts”, “Anthropology”, “Moose the Mooche” and Monk’s “Rhythm-a-ning”. Gershwin also used the tune himself, as the theme of his Variations on “I Got Rhythm” for piano and orchestra in 1934.
At New York’s Town Hall on 9 June 1945, tenor saxophonist Don Byas and bassist Slam Stewart played it as a duo, with no drums or piano. JazzStandards.com includes it among its recommended recordings of the song.
Classic “I Got Rhythm” version: Don Byas and Slam Stewart (live at Town Hall, 1945)
Modern “I Got Rhythm” version: Tony Bennett and Diana Krall (Love Is Here to Stay, 2018)
6. “But Not for Me”
Girl Crazy also gave Ginger Rogers this song. She was 19, and had made her Broadway debut in Top Speed on Christmas Day 1929. Ira’s lyric is self-pitying and funny at once, and the line about how “they’re writing songs of love, but not for me” has been read by singers both ways ever since.
Jazz instrumentalists took it up in the 1950s. Miles Davis recorded it in 1954 for the sessions released as Bags’ Groove, Ahmad Jamal made it the title track of his 1958 live album At the Pershing, and John Coltrane closed My Favorite Things (1961) with a fast tenor version.
The vocal most people know is Chet Baker’s, from his 1954 album Chet Baker Sings. You can read more about that record in our piece on Chet Baker Sings.
Classic “But Not for Me” version: Chet Baker (Chet Baker Sings, 1954)
Modern “But Not for Me” version: Fred Hersch and Esperanza Spalding (Alive at the Village Vanguard, 2023)
7. “Summertime”
Gershwin began work on the music for Porgy and Bess in December 1933 and finished setting “Summertime” by February 1934. The lyric was written by DuBose Heyward, author of the novel Porgy that the opera is based on, not by Ira.
Abbie Mitchell made the first recording on 19 July 1935, with Gershwin at the piano. She then sang it on stage as Clara, a young mother singing to her baby in the opera’s first scene. The Broadway production opened at the Alvin Theatre on 10 October 1935 and ran for 124 performances, which was long for an opera but not enough to cover its costs.
The melody is in A minor and sits close to a pentatonic scale, which gives it a folk-song quality. Will Friedwald has called it “not only a lullaby but a spiritual as well.”
Billie Holiday’s 1936 recording was the first to reach the pop charts. Sidney Bechet recorded it for the newly founded Blue Note label in 1939, and Miles Davis and Gil Evans included it on their Porgy and Bess album in 1958. A 2005 count by The Jazz Discography found 1,161 released recordings, placing it among the most recorded jazz standards.
Classic “Summertime” version: Sidney Bechet (Blue Note single, 1939)
Modern “Summertime” version: Joshua Redman with Brad Mehldau (Timeless Tales (For Changing Times), 1998)
8. “A Foggy Day”
By 1937 the Gershwins were working in Hollywood. “A Foggy Day (In London Town)” was written for the RKO film A Damsel in Distress, where Fred Astaire introduced it. The London fog of the title was the thick, polluted “pea souper” that the city was known for.
Astaire recorded it for Brunswick that October. Frank Sinatra included it on Songs for Young Lovers in 1953, and Charles Mingus recorded it as “A Foggy Day (In San Francisco)” on Pithecanthropus Erectus in 1956.
That same year Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong recorded it with Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Buddy Rich for Ella and Louis. It’s a relaxed performance, with Armstrong’s trumpet between the vocals. For more from those two, see our guides to the best Ella Fitzgerald albums and to Louis Armstrong.
Classic “A Foggy Day” version: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (Ella and Louis, 1956)
Modern “A Foggy Day” version: Bill Charlap (Plays George Gershwin: The American Soul, 2005)
9. “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”
Fred Astaire sang this to Ginger Rogers in Shall We Dance (1937). It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, but lost to “Sweet Leilani” from the Bing Crosby film Waikiki Wedding.
The film opened on 7 May 1937 and Gershwin died about two months later, so the nomination, for the awards held in March 1938, came after his death.
Ira’s lyric lists small, specific memories, such as the way she wears her hat and the way she sips her tea, which gives singers concrete lines to work with. Jazz pianists like the tune’s even, medium-tempo swing.
Erroll Garner played it at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California on 19 September 1955, in the concert released as Concert by the Sea.
Classic “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” version: Erroll Garner (Concert by the Sea, 1955)
Modern “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” version: Diana Krall (Love Scenes, 1997)
10. “Love Is Here to Stay”
This was the last song George Gershwin completed. He wrote it for The Goldwyn Follies in 1937, and Ira finished the lyric after his brother’s death. George had not written a verse, so the composer Vernon Duke put one together from ideas that Ira and the pianist Oscar Levant remembered him playing.
The song was first called “It’s Here to Stay”, then “Our Love Is Here to Stay”. Kenny Baker sang it in the 1938 film, but it got little screen time. It caught on after Gene Kelly sang it to Leslie Caron in An American in Paris in 1951.
Frank Sinatra recorded it with Nelson Riddle in 1956 for Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, and Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong all made versions too.
Classic “Love Is Here to Stay” version: Frank Sinatra (Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, 1956)
Modern “Love Is Here to Stay” version: Marcus Roberts (Gershwin for Lovers, 1994)
George Gershwin’s last year
In early 1937 Gershwin began having blackouts. While playing his Concerto in F at a concert of his music on 11 February, he lost coordination for a few moments. Over the following months he had severe headaches and kept noticing a smell of burning rubber. Doctors found nothing and put his headaches and mood down to stress.
On the night of 9 July he collapsed at the lyricist Yip Harburg’s house and was taken to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles. Surgeons found a brain tumour and operated in the early hours of 11 July, and he died later that morning, aged 38.
Ira lived until 1983 and went on writing with Kurt Weill, Jerome Kern and Harold Arlen, among others. In 1998, the centenary of his birth, George was given a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize “for his distinguished and enduring contributions to American music.” If you’re working through the songbook, Cole Porter is a good next stop: here are ten Cole Porter songs jazz musicians play.
Looking for more about the great songwriters of jazz? We highlighted 10 of them here.
Which other George Gershwin songs would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
Featured image: Bain News Service, Public domain, adapted, via Wikimedia Commons
