49 Fun Facts About Rhapsody in Blue

Which Baz Luhrmann film reveals its hero to a burst of Rhapsody in Blue and fireworks?

The Great Gatsby: the 2013 film plays it as Leonardo DiCaprio's Gatsby first turns and smiles, though the story is set in 1922, two years before the piece existed.

Rhapsody in Blue premiered during which American era?

Prohibition: the sale of alcohol had been banned for four years when the piece premiered in 1924, at a concert staged to show that jazz belonged in the concert hall.

A few weeks after its premiere, Rhapsody in Blue moved up to which larger New York hall?

Carnegie Hall: the first concert drew so much attention that Whiteman repeated it in March and then took it there on April 21, 1924, with the composer again at the piano.

Which instrument plays the famous opening glissando of Rhapsody in Blue?

Clarinet: Gershwin wrote only a trill and a plain 17-note scale, but in rehearsal Whiteman's player smeared the run into a wail as a joke, and Gershwin asked him to keep it in.

Which dancer starred with his sister in the Gershwin brothers' Broadway hit of 1924, the year of Rhapsody in Blue?

Fred Astaire recalled Gershwin, then a teenage song plugger, saying how great it would be to write a show that Fred could be in; in 1924 he and his sister Adele were its stars.

At which New York venue was Rhapsody in Blue premiered?

Aeolian Hall: the 42nd Street concert room belonged to a piano maker, and its ventilation failed that afternoon, leaving a restless, sweating audience well before the new piece began.

What was the title of the concert at which Rhapsody in Blue was first performed?

An Experiment in Modern Music: Whiteman's manager called it 'purely educational', a lecture-concert meant to show how far popular music had come from the 'discordant' early days of jazz.

The newspaper item that announced Gershwin's 'jazz concerto' in 1924 also promised a 'syncopated tone poem' from which songwriter?

Irving Berlin wrote no tone poem and nothing new at all, so the band played three of his existing songs; Gershwin found his own piece announced when the item was read out to him in a billiard hall.

Roughly how long before the premiere did Gershwin start writing Rhapsody in Blue?

About five weeks: his two-piano manuscript is dated January 7, 1924, and he was so rushed that he left gaps in the piano part to improvise on the day.

Gershwin said the plan for Rhapsody in Blue came to him on a train to which city?

Boston: he said the train's 'steely rhythms' and 'rattle-ty bang' let him suddenly hear, and even see on paper, the whole piece from beginning to end.

What working title did Gershwin give Rhapsody in Blue while composing it?

American Rhapsody: he said he heard the piece as 'a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America', and it was his brother Ira who proposed swapping the country for a colour.

Ira Gershwin suggested the title Rhapsody in Blue after seeing an exhibition of paintings by which artist?

James McNeill Whistler named paintings like pieces of music with colours attached, such as Nocturne in Black and Gold and Arrangement in Grey and Black, the portrait better known as Whistler's Mother.

Ferde Grofé, who orchestrated Rhapsody in Blue, later wrote which suite for Whiteman's band?

Grand Canyon Suite: Whiteman's band premiered it in 1931, and its clip-clopping movement 'On the Trail' went on to sell Philip Morris cigarettes on American radio and TV for decades.

Which strummed dance-band instrument survives in the symphonic score of Rhapsody in Blue?

Banjo: the 1942 score for full orchestra still carries its part, though a note in the score calls it almost optional, since the strings already cover the rhythm it used to strum.

At the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue, how did the band know the improvised piano solo was ending?

Gershwin nodded: the band's parts simply said to wait for his nod, because he improvised stretches of the solo and wrote the piano part down only after the concert.

Which operetta composer wrote a new suite for the concert that introduced Rhapsody in Blue?

Victor Herbert, far the better-known name in 1924, wrote his Suite of Serenades for the programme, yet the concert is remembered for the newcomer's piece that followed it.

Which magazine put Gershwin on its cover in July 1925, the year after Rhapsody in Blue?

Time: the piece had turned a Broadway songwriter into a composer the whole country knew, and the record he made of it with Whiteman's band went on to sell a million copies.

Which 1928 Gershwin orchestral piece has parts for four taxi horns?

An American in Paris: he toured the car-parts shops of the Avenue de la Grande Armée for taxi horns that honked the right notes, then carried them home for the New York premiere.

Why does Gershwin and Whiteman's 1924 recording of Rhapsody in Blue sound rushed?

To fit two sides of a disc: a 12-inch record held about nine minutes in all, so a piece that ran some 17 minutes in the hall was cut down and played at a sprint.

Which orchestra recorded Rhapsody in Blue at nearly full length in 1935?

The Boston Pops, under Arthur Fiedler, set down nearly 14 minutes with pianist Jesús María Sanromá, swapping the jazz-band scoring of the premiere for a conventional symphony orchestra.

Which pianist, a close friend of Gershwin, recorded Rhapsody in Blue with Eugene Ormandy in 1945?

Oscar Levant tried to copy his late friend's own way of playing the piece, and that same year he appeared as himself in the Hollywood film of the composer's life.

In 1976 Michael Tilson Thomas recorded Rhapsody in Blue with Gershwin, dead since 1937, as soloist, using what?

Piano roll: Gershwin had cut the roll in 1925, and a player piano reproduced his performance while the Columbia Jazz Band accompanied in the original band scoring.

Which airline made Rhapsody in Blue the theme music of its advertising and safety videos?

United Airlines licensed the tune from the Gershwin estate, calls it the airline's soundtrack, and has invited four musicians to remix it in the styles of their home cities.

Which Woody Allen film opens with a black-and-white montage set to Rhapsody in Blue?

Manhattan: as Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic play, Allen's narrator keeps scrapping and redrafting the first line of his book about a man who loves the city.

Eighty-four pianists played Rhapsody in Blue at the opening of the Olympics in which American city?

Los Angeles: at the 1984 opening ceremony the 84 grand pianos came into view together through the arches of the Coliseum's peristyle, in a segment called Urban Rhapsody.

Which Disney film set Rhapsody in Blue to a New York segment drawn in Al Hirschfeld's style?

Fantasia 2000: Eric Goldberg, the animator of Aladdin's Genie, got the caricaturist's blessing and drew four restless 1930s New Yorkers who help one another without ever realising it.

A 1998 law kept Rhapsody in Blue under copyright until 2020; it is named for which entertainer turned politician?

Sonny Bono: the act named for the late singer and congressman added 20 years to old copyrights after lobbying by Disney and the Gershwin family, so the 1924 piece went free in 2020, not 2000.

Which Brazilian musician followed his funk hit version of the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme with a 1973 Rhapsody in Blue?

Eumir Deodato trimmed the piece into a single over neo-samba rhythms, the follow-up to his remake of Also Sprach Zarathustra, which had reached No. 2 in America that spring.

Which two pianists performed Rhapsody in Blue together at the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008?

Herbie Hancock and Lang Lang, one jazz pianist and one classical, hit it off so well that the one-night duet grew into a two-piano world tour the following year.

Where did the first British performance of Rhapsody in Blue take place, in June 1925?

The Savoy Hotel: its house dance band, the Savoy Orpheans, played the piece with Gershwin himself at the piano while the BBC relayed the performance live to listeners at home.

Which 1960s pop songwriter, who first heard Rhapsody in Blue aged two, released an album of Gershwin songs in 2010?

Brian Wilson opened and closed the album with his own stacked harmonies on the piece, and the Gershwin estate let him finish two songs the composer had left as fragments.

Which composer wrote that he adored Rhapsody in Blue but called it a set of 'stuck-together sections'?

Leonard Bernstein argued in 1955 that it was no true composition, since parts could be cut or shuffled without harm, yet four years later he recorded it, playing the solo while conducting.

Which 1990s band quotes Rhapsody in Blue on piano at the end of its song 'Philosophy'?

Ben Folds Five: the frontman hammers out a riff from the piece as the song winds down, and two decades later he had written and recorded a piano concerto of his own with the Nashville Symphony.

Which one-act Gershwin 'jazz opera' of 1922 impressed Whiteman, who later commissioned a concert work from him?

Blue Monday: the gloomy one-act piece was dropped from a Broadway revue after its opening night in 1922, but Whiteman, who had conducted it from the pit, did not forget it.

In which New York borough was Gershwin born in 1898?

Brooklyn: he was born Jacob Gershwine, and when a second-hand piano reached the family flat he stunned his parents by sitting straight down and playing tunes he had taught himself at a neighbour's.

Gershwin died at 38, under two years after which show opened?

Porgy and Bess closed after 124 performances with its backers' money lost; he died in July 1937, long before it was recognised as a landmark of American opera.

Which 1919 Gershwin song, with words by Irving Caesar, became his first big hit once Al Jolson took it up?

Swanee made little mark in the revue it was written for; then Jolson put it into his own show Sinbad and recorded it, and it became the biggest hit Gershwin ever had.

Which Paris music teacher turned Gershwin down as a pupil?

Nadia Boulanger taught Aaron Copland and a generation of American composers, yet she sent Gershwin away, by one account telling him she could teach him nothing; Ravel refused him too.

Which Gershwin show of 1931 was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Of Thee I Sing won as a piece of writing, so Ira Gershwin shared the prize for his lyrics while George, who composed the score, got nothing until an honorary Pulitzer in 1998.

The actor who played Gershwin in the 1945 film Rhapsody in Blue was the father of which M*A*S*H star?

Alan Alda: his father, Robert, played the composer in 1945 and three decades later made two guest appearances alongside his son on M*A*S*H.

At 15, Gershwin left school to work as a 'song plugger' in which New York music district?

Tin Pan Alley: he sat at a publisher's piano playing the latest tunes all day, so that the singers and bandleaders who dropped in would buy the sheet music.

Rhapsody in Blue premiered on the afternoon of which American holiday?

Lincoln's Birthday: it was snowing on February 12, 1924, yet Whiteman found people fighting to get in at the doors, and the box office said it could have sold the house ten times over.

Larry Adler won Gershwin's own praise for playing Rhapsody in Blue on which instrument?

Harmonica: Adler played it for the composer in 1934 and, by his own account, was told the piece sounded as if it had been written for him; he recorded it in London a year later.

Which work did conductor Walter Damrosch commission from Gershwin after hearing the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue?

Concerto in F: having left the scoring of the Rhapsody to Whiteman's arranger, Gershwin now orchestrated every bar himself, for a regular symphony orchestra.

Whiteman, who commissioned Rhapsody in Blue, later gave which crooner his start in a vocal trio?

Bing Crosby: Whiteman hired him as half of a duo that flopped at New York's Paramount Theatre, and only when a third singer joined to make the Rhythm Boys did the act take off.

Gershwin and Whiteman's 1927 remake of their Rhapsody in Blue record used which new studio technology?

The microphone: their 1924 disc had been cut acoustically, with the band playing into a recording horn, and they made it afresh in April 1927, two years after electrical recording reached the studios.

Grofé rearranged Rhapsody in Blue for which 1930 film starring Paul Whiteman?

King of Jazz was shot in two-colour Technicolor, which had no blue dye, so the designers coaxed a blue-green from the green one and set the giant-piano number against grey and silver.

In Hollywood, Gershwin played regular tennis matches against which modernist composer?

Arnold Schoenberg, the stern inventor of twelve-tone music, was his regular tennis partner in California, and Gershwin, who also painted, did an oil portrait of him.

Which novelty hit of the early 1920s got a comic number of its own at the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue?

Yes! We Have No Bananas: the band played a comic 'origin' of the song, whose main phrase, Whiteman wrote two years later, had been lifted from Handel's Messiah.