Jerome Kern: The Late-Night Poker Game That Built the Modern Musical

In May 1915, a young American composer oversleeps after a late poker game and misses his morning departure on the RMS Lusitania. That terrible alarm-clock habit saved the life of Jerome Kern, the man who would essentially invent the modern American musical.This episode dives into the life, contradictions, and monumental legacy of a composer who wrote over 700 songs and re-engineered the very mechanics of how a stage show works. It traces how he transformed Broadway from a shuffle of unconnected songs into integrated, story-driven theater.The accidental order of 200 pianos that freed him from the family business and into music schoolHow he broke the European waltz with They Didn't Believe Me and injected jazz progressions into BroadwayThe intimate Princess Theatre shows that fused song and plot into a single storytelling engineThe staggering gamble of Show Boat and how Old Man River gave serious drama emotional gravityThe 1929 book auction that netted a fortune just before the crash, and Hammerstein singing at his deathbed