Kern was a native New Yorker, born in city’s brewery district in 1885, a child of German Jews. At the time of his birth, his father ran a stable; later he became a successful merchant. Jerome grew up on the east side near Central Park where he attended public schools. He showed an early aptitude for music and was taught piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher.
In 1897 the family moved to Newark. Jerome wrote songs for his high school’s first musical – a minstrel show, no less – in 1901, and for an amateur musical adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin put on at the Newark Yacht Club in 1902. Blackface was in vogue at the turn of the century, and the word “racism” hadn’t yet been invented.
Attempting to follow the path that George Gershwin was later to follow, Jerome dropped out in the spring of his senior year in 1902. Dad was furious and insisted that Jerome go into the family business instead of composing. But Jerome screwed up his very first assignment, which was to purchase two pianos for the store. Instead he ordered 200. Dad decided he could do less damage in music, so Jerome became a student at the New York College of Music, studying piano and harmony. His first published composition, a piano piece, appeared in the same year. From 1903 to 1905, he pursued his music education in Germany at Heidelberg.
Like Gershwin, Jerome became a song plugger on Tin Pan Alley and occasionally worked as a rehearsal pianist for Broadway shows. While in London, he secured a contract to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. It was good money.
In 1905, Kern contributed the song, “How’d You Like to Spoon with Me?” to this hit musical when the show transferred to Chicago and New York in 1905.
”Till the Clouds Roll By” was a Hollywood biopic of Kern made shortly after his death in 1945. The very young Angela Lansbury dances her way through the song while an uncredited studio singer provides the cockney voice for this cute little gem.