Setting the Standards

Fashions come and go in pop and classical music alike, but never has the same idea hit both ends of the street at the same time the way jazz did in the first quarter of this century. Unlike such other seismic events as rock 'n' roll (downtown) and atonality (up), jazz contained a bit of everything: the tingle and immediacy of pop but also the sophisticated harmonies of classical and the authenticity and rootedness of folk.

So whatever music you wrote, the question was, "What do we do with this thing called jazz?" It's generally agreed by now that George Gershwin, whose centennial is being celebrated this week, gave not one but two answers to this question better than anyone else--by taking jazz upmarket with his Rhapsody in Blue and Piano Concerto in F Major, and by weaving it back into folklore with Porgy and Bess.

But maybe Gershwin's greatest legacy is his third answer: how to use jazz in songs. To put it another way, What greater musical legacy has America given the world than the songs of Gershwin, Cole Porter and the rest of the gang? What body of our music has been more widely played, admired and memorized around the world than the jazz-flavored songs known as standards? And where did they come from? Listen up.

To be fair, not even Gershwin's legendary ego was big enough to claim more than half the credit for this astonishing outburst of melody. No sooner had Scott Joplin introduced ragtime in the late 19th century than commercial writers were figuring ways to work its kicky, irresistible beat into their songs. By 1911 young Irving Berlin could confidently assert that Everybody's Doing It (Doing It, Doing It) Now--and not just Americans either. Dukes and lords and Russian Czars were doing it too, as Berlin noted elsewhere. And a few years later, ragtime became part of the sound track for World War I and the jazz age that followed.

But there's a lot more to jazz than just a catchy beat. There were whole new chords and phrases and key changes--and moods--that the rag writers hadn't even touched yet. From 1919 to 1924 these would virtually serve as Gershwin's private playground and personal gold mine, from which the Brooklyn-born son of immigrants proceeded to extract all kinds of music, including, in one glittering shovelful, not just his famous Rhapsody but also a related song called The Man I Love. This would beget almost instantly a new kind of American song, exemplified by Porter's Night and Day and Richard Rodgers' My Funny Valentine.

In no time, a whole new generation of talent had broken into Gershwin's gold mine and was digging away merrily for songs like Stardust, Stormy Weather and Dancing in the Dark. Even established writers like Jerome Kern and Vincent Youmans began to swing a little with Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and Time on My Hands, respectively. But no matter what anyone else did, Gershwin seemed to stay at least two moves ahead, causing Youmans reportedly to mutter "so the son of a bitch thought of it" every time Gershwin struck again.

His services to the American song didn't end with providing a mechanical rabbit for others to chase. He was an incomparable booster of other writers; it's hard to find a rival that he didn't befriend and, if necessary, help. So it's not altogether unfair that when any song from that era is played, someone almost always asks, "Is that by Gershwin?"