Overview
Introduction
"I Got Rhythm" is a piece 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' on a Riff)".
Composition
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.
The piece was originally penned in the key of D♭ major. The song melody uses four notes of the five-note pentatonic scale, first rising, then falling. A rhythmic interest in the song is that the tune keeps behind the main pulse, with the three "I got..." phrases syncopated, appearing one beat behind in the first bar, while the fourth phase "Who could..." rushes in to the song. The song's chorus is in a 34-bar AABA form.[1] Its chord progression (although often reduced to a standard 32-bar structure, for the sake of improvised solos), is known as the "rhythm changes", and is the foundation for many other popular jazz tunes. The song was used as the theme in Gershwin's last concert piece for piano and orchestra, the Variations on "I Got Rhythm", written in 1934. The song has become symbolic of the Gershwins, of swing, and of the 1920s.
As usual, George Gershwin wrote the melody first and gave it to Ira to set, but Ira found it an unusually hard melody for which to create lyrics. He experimented for two weeks with the rhyme scheme he felt the music called for, sets of triple rhymes, but found that the heavy rhyming "seemed at best to give a pleasant and jingly Mother Goose quality to a tune which should throw its weight around more." Finally he began to experiment with leaving most of the lines unrhymed. "This approach felt stronger," he wrote, "and I finally arrived at the present refrain, with only 'more-door' and 'mind him-find him' the rhymes." He added that this approach "was a bit daring for me who usually depended on rhyme insurance."[2]
Ira also wrote that although the phrase "who could ask for anything more?" is repeated four times in the song, he decided not to make it the title because "somehow the first line of the refrain sounded more arresting and provocative."
Lyrics
"I Got Rhythm"
Days can be sunny with never a sigh
Don't need what money can buy
Birds in the trees sing their dayful of songs
Why shouldn't we sing along?
I'm chipper all the day
Happy with my life
How do I get that way?
Look at what I've got:
I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
I've got daisies in green pastures
I've got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
Old man trouble I don't mind him
You won't find him 'round my door
I've got starlight
I've got sweet dreams
I've got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
Old man trouble, I don't mind him
You won't find him 'round my door
I've got starlight
I've got sweet dreams
I've got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
Oh, I've got rhythm
I've got music
I've got daisies in green pastures
I've got starlight
I've got sweet dreams
I've got my man
Who could ask for anything more?
I've got rhythm, I've got rhythm
