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Jerome Kern is often called the father of American musical theater. Kern is remembered for the hundreds of songs he wrote for musical plays and movies. Music historians say that Kern gave artistic importance to American popular music for the first time. And, they say, he led the development of the first truly American theater music.
Jerome Kern was born into a middle-class family in New York City in 1885. Jerome’s mother, Fanny, loved the piano. She began to teach Jerome how to play when he was very young.
Jerome was a quiet boy and not a top student. When he completed high school, his father said he would have to work in the family’s store. But he later came to believe that Jerome might do better in music than in business after all. So he let the boy go to Europe to study music, as almost all serious young musicians did at the time.
Jerome Kern began his career as a songwriter in theaters in London and New York City. Success came quickly. By the early nineteen twenties, Kern was a successful young composer for Broadway musical comedies. In one three-year period alone, he wrote music for nineteen shows.
Kern wanted to try something completely new. He thought a musical play should be a real work of art, not just a collection of songs and dances. Kern wanted to do a truly American musical, with real American characters and real situations.
In 1927, he found the story he wanted. It was the book “Show Boat” by American writer Edna Ferber. “Show Boat” takes place in the 1880 on a passenger steam boat that travels along the Mississippi River.
Kern died in 1945 at the age of sixty. But “Show Boat” has been performed thousands of times all over the world.