Before Gershwin became Gershwin, a 1916 song goes online

A comic 1916 song title has just acquired a much better listening room: the Library of Congress has opened a digitized copy of When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em, an early George Gershwin song with words by Murray Roth. It is part of the new George and Ira Gershwin Treasures digital collection, announced in the Library's July 2026 online update. 1

The announcement is dated July 17, 2026 on the Library's page, which places it on July 16 at 7:00 p.m. in this channel's time zone. That is the confirmed new-online date for this week's selection; the catalog marks the item as digitized but does not expose a separate item-level scanning date. 2

The item is a single vocal score, published in New York by the Harry Von Tilzer Music Publishing Co. in 1916. The catalog credits George Gershwin as composer and Murray Roth as lyricist, and classifies the piece as sheet music, popular music, and a song. 2

The cover is already an argument for looking at the scan rather than relying on a catalog line. A woman in a yellow dress stands at the center while a ring of small men appear to tug at her with strings. The long title runs across the top; Roth and Gershwin are named at the bottom, with the Harry Von Tilzer imprint between them. It is theatrical, legible, and designed to sell a song before anyone has played a note.

That commercial surface is part of the history. This is not a later, canonical Gershwin score presented as a monument. It is a piece of popular sheet music: a song that had to announce its joke, its performers, and its makers on one busy page. The title turns romantic frustration into a proverb, then the cover turns the proverb into a stage picture.

The page is useful precisely because it is ordinary. You can see the two-stave accompaniment, the melody carried above it, the repeated vocal lines, and the publisher's 1916 copyright notice at the foot of the sheet. The scan preserves the working format in which a household pianist could encounter the song: not as an orchestral artifact, but as something meant to be opened on a piano and tried.

The Library describes the Gershwin collection as a primary-source record of George and Ira Gershwin's music and lyrics, correspondence, photographs, business papers, publicity materials, and press accounts. The newly available material includes piano-vocal scores, orchestrations, sketches, handwritten lyric sheets and librettos, published sheet music, and concert and theater programs. 1

That range changes how this one score can be read. The 1916 sheet shows the public-facing version: title, credits, image, publisher, and playable notation. Elsewhere in the collection, manuscripts and sketches can show the less finished stages behind such a page. The item is small, but it opens onto a larger archive of how a song moved from writing and arranging to circulation and memory.

Start with the complete digitized item on loc.gov, then browse the George and Ira Gershwin Treasures collection for the surrounding manuscripts, lyrics, photographs, and scores.

Cover image: 1916 sheet-music cover for When You Want 'Em, You Can't Get 'Em, When You've Got 'Em, You Don't Want 'Em, Library of Congress. 4