ABSTRACT
But although the era’s writers vastly overstated jazz’s Jewishness, their views had roots in the great overrepresentation of Jews among Tin Pan Alley composers. As Jeffrey Magee puts it, “The American songbook is largely a Jewish creation.”6 Gershwin and the Tin Pan Alley composers were not jazz musicians per se, but they provided material for much of the jazz of the Twenties and beyond. The compositions of Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and others transformed popular music and provided the foundation, in the form of the “Great American Songbook,” for much of the jazz that followed. Had they not existed, the jazz of the 1930s and beyond would not have been the same. Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” (1930) alone has provided the underpinning for countless recorded jazz performances.7 In the decade of its release, it was recorded by jazz luminaries like Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Ethel Waters, Benny Goodman,
Lionel Hampton, and Django Reinhardt.8 Charlie Parker recorded many compositions based on its chords, and it is a staple of jazz improvising to this day, perhaps second only to the blues in the jazz vocabulary.
