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George Gershwin was born on September 26,1898. He was the second child of the family. His family lived in a poor area in New York City's lower east side. George parents found a brilliant teacher named Charles Hambitzer to teach George. After a concert on November 25, 1917, where Vivenne Segal performed two of George's songs. It was then that George's career as a composer had begun. |
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In 1919,a young producer Alex Aarons, asked Gershwin to compose the entire score for the musical La,La, Lucille. La, La, Lucille was a hit and the partnership between Aarons' and Gershwin began and lasted until 1933. At a party given for Al Jolson, who was the greastest broadway star at the time, Gershwin played an improviised version of Swanee,and later recorded it. George made $10,000 and was a star of Tin Pan Alley. | |
| Some of the plays that Gershwin composed scores for were La, La, Lucille, and Scandals. He also decided to compose a short jazz opera. In doing this, he invented a new kind of American music. It is a mixture of three different types of popular music at the time. They were jaxx, broadway, and opera. The opera that had this type of music in it was Blue Monday. Rhapsody in Blue was composed in about 10 days. Gershwin first performed this on February 12, 1924. In it's first ten years, Rhapsody in Blue earned Gershwin $250,000. Primrose, Lady,be good, Oh Kay!, Strike up the band, Funny Face, and Girl Crazy were all compositions done by Gershwin. | |||||
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| It was in February of 1937 that Gershwins first signs of illness began appearing. It wasn't until July 9 of that same year that George fell into a coma. Only days later,on July 11, George Gershwin had died. |  |
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