George Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess, and “Summertime” — bridging the gap between jazz and classical music more successfully than any composer before or since. Then, at the peak of his powers, he began experiencing headaches, coordination problems, and the smell of burning rubber. A brain tumor killed him at thirty-eight, cutting short the most versatile musical career in American history.

This episode traces Gershwin from his Lower East Side childhood through the Tin Pan Alley years, Rhapsody in Blue, the controversial triumph of Porgy and Bess, and the sudden neurological decline that ended his life before he turned forty.

• Gershwin’s self-taught beginnings on the Lower East Side and his rapid conquest of Tin Pan Alley
• Rhapsody in Blue and the fusion of jazz and classical that made him a sensation at twenty-five
• Porgy and Bess — the opera that divided critics and defined American musical theater
• The headaches, the phantom smells, the misdiagnosis, and the brain tumor that killed him at thirty-eight