I Got Rhythm

I Got Rhythm was composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by his brother Ira Gershwin for the 1930 Broadway musical Girl Crazy. The song originated as a slower number written for the 1928 show Treasure Girl but was reworked into a faster, more driving arrangement to suit the talents of Ethel Merman, who delivered it as a showstopping debut performance on opening night. The Girl Crazy pit orchestra was itself remarkable, featuring Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, Jimmy Dorsey, and Gene Krupa, who reportedly jammed during intermissions. Ira Gershwin struggled with the lyrics, eventually crafting a deliberately slangy, prose-like text with interior rhymes to match the melody's assertive syncopation, which places its three repeated phrases one beat behind the main pulse for rhythmic tension. The song's chord progression gave rise to what jazz musicians call rhythm changes, one of the most commonly used harmonic frameworks in the jazz repertoire and the foundation for hundreds of subsequent compositions including Charlie Parker's Anthropology, Duke Ellington's Cotton Tail, and Sonny Rollins's Oleo. A disputed musicological footnote connects the tune's opening riff to a countermelody in William Grant Still's 1931 Afro-American Symphony, possibly traceable to Still's improvisations as a pit musician in 1920s Harlem shows. Gershwin himself later expanded the material into his 1934 Variations on I Got Rhythm for piano and orchestra. One of the earliest jazz recordings was made by Red Nichols and His Orchestra for Brunswick in October 1930, just days after the Broadway premiere.