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photo by Carl Van Vechten/Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons
George Gershwin in 1937
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“There had been so much chatter about the limitations of jazz, not to speak of the manifest misunderstandings of its function. Jazz, they said, had to be in strict time. It had to cling to dance rhythms. I resolved, if possible, to kill that misconception with one sturdy blow. Inspired by this aim, I set to work composing with unwonted rapidity. No set plan was in my mind – no structure to which my music would conform. The rhapsody, as you see, began as a purpose, not a plan. I tried to conceive the composition as a whole. I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America – of our vast melting-pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.”
-George Gershwin
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The cover of the original sheet music for Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
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Listen to the original 1924 recording of “Rhapsody in Blue” by Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra
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Click here to read a history of “Rhapsody in Blue” on Wikipedia
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