George Gershwin That Certain Feeling Jerry Willard, guitar
George Gershwin was only 18 when he had his first song published in 1916, a tune called When You Want 'Em You Can't Get 'Em (When You've Got 'Em You Don't Want 'Em). It earned the composer five dollars and marked the beginning of an output that achieved unprecedented sophistication and diversity in the realm of popular music in America.
Gershwin's introduction to professional music making took place at Jerome H. Remnick and Co. Music Publishers, at the time the foremost publisher of popular music. As a “song-plugger” Gershwin often worked ten-hour days playing Remnick's extensive catalogue of songs at sight, in any key, for a constant stream of would-be starlets, theatre managers, vaudeville artists and bandleaders. In these circumstances the teenaged composer received practical 'hands-on' experience and met some of his closest future collaborators, including Fred Astaire and the lyricist Ir...
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