Ferde Grofé was born into a family that featured four generations of musicians. His father was a baritone who sang light opera and his mother was an accomplished cellist and teacher. She taught her son to play both violin and piano. Following his father’s death, Grofé’s mother took him Leipzig to study piano, viola and composition. In 1920, he was playing jazz piano with the Paul Whiteman orchestra and was the band leader’s principal arranger for 12 years. His most famous arrangement was George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”  Arranging the piece twice more in late years, his 1942 arrangement for full orchestra is the one most commonly heard today.