George Gershwin might have been the last to know he was working on “Rhapsody in Blue.” As the story goes, he got this helpful information in January 1924 while he was playing pool at a Manhattan billiard hall as his brother (and future musical collaborator) Ira read the newspaper. Ira came across a piece about an ambitious experimental concert being planned by bandleader Paul Whiteman for the following month. The story claimed “George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto.”

Gershwin had already turned Whiteman down, believing he didn’t have time to work on a new piece, so this was news to him. When he called the bandleader, Whiteman pleaded with Gershwin to come on board and help save the concert idea from being stolen by a rival musician. Gershwin relented, and went to work on what became “Rhapsody.” He had five weeks to get it done.

Finally the big day came. Whiteman’s concert at New York’s Aeolian Hall was intended to blend elements of jazz and classical music, and demonstrate that the relatively new form of jazz deserved to be taken seriously. Today, just about everything about it has been forgotten…except for the piece Gershwin debuted late into the program 91 years ago on February 12, 1924. Gershwin played piano for the first performance of “Rhapsody in Blue,” which begins with a sharp clarinet wail (called a glissando by those in the know) that has become one of the most famous openings in all of instrumental music. (I found multiple suggestions that only the four notes beginning Beethoven’s Fifth rival it in popular recognition.) It was improvised during rehearsal as a joke, and Gershwin kept it in.

Gershwin has described his piece as “a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness.” Moviemakers have more often seen it as a musical portrait of Manhattan. Since 1924, “Rhapsody” has, like the forms of jazz and classical it sought to marry, occupied an interesting limbo straddling the common and the elevated. Serious musical critics have dissected it at length, and musicians like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Michael Stipe of R.E.M. have cited it as an inspiration. It’s also popped up in United Airlines ads or in the background at Disney World. More than anything, it’s a piece that seems naturally at home in just about any American setting.

Whiteman got more than he bargained for when he twisted Gershwin's arm, and the fruit of what might have been a little dirty trick between colleagues (whether Whiteman intentionally leaked Gershwin's name to the press is unclear) lives on nearly a century later. If Whiteman's intention was to bring "high" and "low" together, the bandleader couldn't have orchestrated Gershwin's role more perfectly.