The Catfish Row Suite is Gershwin's own purely instrumental adaptation of selected scenes from his opera Porgy and Bess. There are several named sections. The first, "Catfish Row," opens with the opera's overture and includes the "Jasbo Brown Blues" for solo piano. The movement continues with "Summertime," whose melody is assigned to various solo instruments in the orchestra. "Porgy Sings" commences with "I Got Plenty of Nuttin'" in the banjo and continues with "Bess, You is my Woman Now." The "Fugue" is the one used as background music during the fight between Porgy and Crown and to accompany the ultimate death of Crown. "Hurricane" is extracted from the opening of Act 2, Scene 3; a lyrical English horn-and-string melody is followed by a terrifying depiction of the storm. "Good Morning, Brother," also called "Occupational Humoresque," includes "Good Morning, Brother," "Sure to Go to Heaven" (Children's Song), and the opera's finale, "Lord, I'm on my Way."

According to Edward Jablonski, "Though a scissors-and-paste job, Gershwin's suite is a carefully thought out musical précis of the score. He extracted five sections and bridged them successfully in an impressive compendium including many instrumental passages that had been jettisoned in Boston...." The work also confirms that Gershwin, who was sensitive to criticism of his compositional skills and had set out to prove his abilities in Porgy and Bess, was both capable and imaginative as an orchestrator.

Composer Robert Russell Bennett also prepared a suite from the opera, (Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture), which has enjoyed far more frequent performances than Gershwin's own suite.

The Catfish Row Suite was first heard on January 21, 1936, in a performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music.

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