I had the pace – how the Gershwins laid the foundations for a myriad of songs

On stage, “I Got Rhythm” was originally sung by Belter at Foghorn's voice making his debut on Broadway, but an instrumental version was quickly recorded by Trumpter Red Nichols (the leader of Crazy girlThe internal group), followed a few months later by a version of Louis Armstrong. The stars of this opening night orchestra have all the recorded versions, as are dozens of other sets, quickly transforming the song into a jazz standard.

George Gershwin was not only the most illustrious pop composer of his generation, of course, but one of the greatest orchestra composers – a McCartney and a Mozart, all in one – and he combined these two roles when he presented “Variations on` `I Got Rhythm ''” in 1934, a symphonic nine minute suite. At this stage, dozens of jazz musicians were doing something similar with “I Got Rhythm”. There was something gloriously attractive and logical about his sequence of 32 -bar chords – the “changes” of the song, in jazz terminology – that he started to feel as familiar as a 12 bar blues: a perfect vehicle for improvisation.

These agreements have become known as “rhythm changes” and jazz musicians began to use them as a completely different composition base. In 1932, the soprano sax player Sidney Bechet recorded a traditional tempo jazz stomper called “shag” using the same chord changes. In 1939, the clarinettist Benny Goodman and his guitarist Charlie Christian did the same with “Seven Come Eleven”, just like the saxophonist Lester Young with “Lester Sauts”, and Duke Ellington with “Cotton Tail”. With the laws on musical copyright applying more to melodies than agreements of agreements, the changes of rhythm have become a fair game for any jazz musician, as long as the melody was significantly different.

And, while jazz started to kiss the rapid complexities of Bebop lightning, these melodies have become very different indeed. Bebop’s godfather, Charlie Parker, wrote at least half a dozen radically distinct tunes based on “I Got Rhythm”, including “Moose the Moche”, “Anthropology” and “Scrapple from the Apple”. Other Bebop giants have followed suit: the “salt peanuts” by Dizzy Gillespie; “Oleo” by Sonny Rollins; “Rhythm-a-Anning” by Thelonious Monk. The number of different jazz tunes written around this basic structure is now in the hundreds.

As the rhythm changes have been anchored in the musical vocabulary, the listeners barely noticed their origin. We have all heard the Christmas Perennial “Santa Claus came from the city” (written by Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1934), but few of us will realize that his chorus of 16 bars has exactly the same agreements as “I Got Rhythm”. Similarly, when Nat King Cole recorded “straighten and fly right” in 1943, few people noticed that he had the same harmonic chassis as “I Got Rhythm” – not only the same choir of 16 bar, but the same Middle Eight. These two songs themselves were covered hundreds of times, the first by all, from Frank Sinatra to Bruce Springsteen, the second by all, of the Andrews sisters in Robbie Williams.

In 1967, a Rock'n'Roll Flirt came with “I Got Rhythm”, when an outfit of the New Jersey called the events reached the best United States with a Falsetto coverage which consciously mentioned the Beach Boys. And in 1979, as part of his return album (perhaps poorly informed), a Ethel Merman, 71, revised his revolutionary success as a hilarious disco tranche.

But, even without a rocky backbeat, the changes of rhythm remained omnipresent in popular culture, to the point where you can barely go a few days without hearing them in a form. Listen to the theme of MUPPET show (Written by Jim Henson and Sam Pottle in 1976), Flints (by William Hanna, Joseph Barbera and Hoyt Curtin in 1961) or even the BBC Quiz University challenge (Written by Derek New in 1962), and you will hear “I Got Rhythm”, bar for bar. You can literally sing a song like the other.