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Program Notes from Connie James: Coming Home- I Got Rhythm from Girl Crazy

I Got Rhythm” is a song composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and published in 1930, which became a jazz standard. Its chord progression, known as the “rhythm changes”, is the foundation for many other popular jazz tunes such as Charlie Parker’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s Bebop standard “Anthropology (Thrivin’ From a Riff)”. The song came from the musical Girl Crazy which also includes two other hit songs, “Embraceable You” and “But Not For Me”, and has been sung by many jazz singers since. It was originally written as a slow song for Treasure Girl (1928) and found another, faster setting in Girl Crazy. Ethel Merman sang the song in the original Broadway production and Broadway lore holds that George Gershwin, after seeing her opening reviews, warned her never to take a singing lesson.