Entranced by ‘Rhapsody in Blue’

CBS News Sunday Morning recently presented a nice piece on the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” The actual anniversary was last February, but no matter.

Forty years after Mr. Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra performed the piece for the first time, my brilliant junior high school music teacher, Mrs. Jetter, opened a suitcase record player (remember those?) in her classroom and, without explanation, told us she thought we should hear the record she was about to play. Putting the vinyl carefully on the turntable, she placed the tonearm at the beginning of the spinning magic and suddenly the instrument I played, a clarinet, rose sweetly into the classroom air.

It was Gershwin’s Rhapsody and I was truly smitten, in a trance. For me, it was something new and exciting. I had grown up listening to my father’s jazz records and my mothers classical records but this was something different, something that to this day I cannot describe. I couldn’t wait to tell my parents about the rhapsodic experience I had at school, after which they purchased an album for me by the original Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Rhapsody on the A side and “An American in Paris” on the B side.

Other kids spoke of their first albums, the Beatles, Dave Clark Five, some British band or other. My older brother had an album by The Kinks. Me, I had Gershwin and it never occurred to me that I might be a little odd. These days I suppose there is no question about it. Since that day 60 years ago I’ve been in the audience twice when the New York Philharmonic performed Rhapsody, once with Leonard Bernstein at the piano, and it’s not the kind of performance you forget.

I’m not sure what my point is here. I’ve written in the past that the activities that kept me interested in school were music and sports. In my time in school in the 1960s the best male athletes were also in vocal music and band. I’m so far removed from young people I have no idea if athletes today also sing or play instruments. I hope they do. I’ve nattered on much too long. Sorry.

It’s warm but the creatures out here are gearing up for autumn. Last night, long after dusk I had to stop twice on my gravel road while a doe and her late-season young one moved down the road ahead of my headlights, searching the sides of the road for a place where they could get off the road, out of my way. It was tough. The now-dark-coated doe knew she could leap the wire fences put up by the neighbors but she had to find a way for her little one as well. An opening presented itself and they were gone.

A few minutes later I stood in my drive, listening to an extraordinary call and response between two owls in the woods behind my house. No idea what their chat was about, but it sounded friendly. It sounded forever. Stars shone brightly overhead and it was one of those times when, just for a brief moment, you’re pretty sure you were offered a glimpse of the size of eternity. Then, like the doe and her baby, time flickered, the moment passed, and it was gone. But it’s OK because I knew that lovely things awaited me in a house that would soon be aglow in the deepening night; a warming fire, some amber liquid, a new mystery book from London, the music of Gershwin, not from a turntable but from a bluetooth speaker, and a couple of sweet cats who don’t think me odd. I am grateful for all of it.

Kurt Ullrich lives in rural Jackson County. The Dubuque Telegraph Herald has published a 60-page magazine of Kurt’s columns. The magazine can be purchased here