Ferde Grofé was born into a musical family. He began playing the piano when he was five years of age and was arranging music by the time he was nine. At age fourteen he ran away from home because his family tried to discourage his musical talents. He supported himself working odd jobs during the day and playing piano or other instruments in cafés and honky-tonks at night. By the age of twenty he was playing in the viola section of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and remained with them for ten years. In 1920 he met Paul Whiteman and began a long career with Whiteman’s jazz orchestra, arranging and writing the music Whiteman played. He also worked with George Gershwin in 1924 on Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” taking the musical score from Gershwin and arranging it for a symphony orchestra.

In the 1930s Grofé was the orchestra conductor for a number of radio programs including the Ford Motor Company Radio Show, Burns and Allen, and CBS Radio Show. He also began his own composing career writing the “Grand Canyon,” “Mississippi,” “Tabloid,” “Hollywood,” and “Aviation” Suites, “Three Shades of Blue,” “Metropolis,” “Free Air,” and several others. He was on the faculty of the Juilliard Summer School from 1939-1943 and participated in national educational projects for music in America. He also composed musical scores for several Hollywood productions. He received an Academy Award for the musical score of “Minstrel Man.”