SALLY MORRIS: ITS SUNDAY! THE ICONIC AMERICAN SONGWRITER - IRVING BERLIN
I don’t know about you, but after the past week I’m really needing a break. Last time out I went to the classic movies of the 1930s and 40s and the great George Raft. It seems a good place to look for a break, actually - the 1930s. It got me thinking about my grandmother’s favorite songwriter - Irving Berlin. I recall her saying, once, “Irving Berlin was a fine man.” And, from what I have been able to learn she was right - his story is another great American story of “rags-to-riches” and immense, enduring success.
Israel Balin (or “Beilin” according to some sources) was born in Russia, in what would now be more accurately known as Belarus, to Jewish parents in 1888. His father was a cantor. In 1893 Balin brought his family to America - things were not going well at all in Russia, especially for Jews. They arrived at Ellis Island Berlin, later, could recall only one memory of his life in Russia - lying on a blanket and watching his family’s home burned to the ground all night, left in ashes by the dawn. He has said that he did not think he was “poor” because they knew no other life. One thing is certain - Irving Berlin loved the country which his family adopted, and which adopted him. We have much to thank Russia’s cruel pograms for. Besides Berlin, they brought to our shores the families of George and Ira Gershwin and so many other creative talents - people who would help to shape our culture in the 20th Century.
But, back to Irving. His father had to turn to other endeavors to feed and house his family, among them kosher butcher and teacher of Hebrew. Everyone had to work hard. His mother was a midwife while his sisters worked in a cigar factory and his brother in a shirt factory. Young Izzy himself sold newspapers, One story told later was when he was eight. As a newsboy, he became distracted watching a ship departing for the Far East - so much so that a crane swung around and he didn’t get out of the way. He was knocked off the pier into the water and when finally rescued from nearly drowning, he still clutched the five pennies he had earned that day. Everyone contributed their meager earnings to their mother to keep the household going.
It was when he went to the Bowery in New York to sell papers that he first heard the sounds of popular music in the streets and doorways. He formed the ambition to become a singing waiter. Because he felt he was not contributing enough he left home at 14, a year after his father died, to try to make it on his own. Without any real marketable skills or education, he began singing for tips. He then moved up to song plugging. At 18 he realized his first ambition and became a singing waiter in New York’s Chinatown, making up some sketchy parodies of the era’s pop songs. He was not at all averse to promoting the songs of others, such as his friend, George M. Cohan’s “Yankee Doodle Boy” At the end of the night’s work he didn’t go home. Instead he sat down at the cafe’s piano and taught himself to play, to improvise some tunes of his own. His first song, it is said, was “Marie from Sunny Italy”. He earned 37 cents for it. He also earned a new name due, supposedly, to a printer misspelling his name. It came out “Berlin”.
He next moved up to another cafe, where he was able to collaborate with some other songwriters and establish himself. It was 1908, and ragtime was all the rage and a center for its dissemination was Tin Pan Alley. Berlin hitched his star to this and became a staff lyricist with a music company. Then, in 1911, celebrity struck. He published “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and was a sensation. He could hardly believe the response himself. It has legs. It has been recorded and been a hit a dozen or so times, including versions by Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Johnny Mercer, Al Jolson and even Ray Charles. It was used in the Ziegfeld Follies and Gershwin recognized it as a groundbreaking work. Berlin transported popular song from the sweet and sentimental Victorian style to a swinging, jaunty new world of “modern” music. He began with a foot in each world, and his “Play a Simple Melody” illustrates for us the internal counterpoint, the juxtaposition of “old” and “new”. Throughout his career, Berlin was able to call upon both to bring us songs such as “Always” or “Count Your Blessings” and at the same time wildly complex rhythms such as that of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” or “Pack Up Your Troubles and Go to the Devil” and jazz tunes like “Blue Skies”.
Irving Berlin’s star began a dramatic ascent and never came down. His personal life, however, was not without heartbreak. He wrote his first actual ballad as salve to his grief at losing his wife, Dorothy Goetz, to typhoid fever, which she contracted on their Havana honeymoon. It was called “When I Lost You” and survives as a deeply moving tribute. It seems he could not hide from success even grieving a lost love - his song sold a million copies. Berlin continued to write and although many of his songs enjoyed only brief success, he was an eternal fountain of musical ideas and they just kept on coming. Many of them were for new immigrants from various places around the world and for new dance fads.
In 1917 the already successful Irving Berlin was drafted. For once, at least, the Army did the logical thing and kept Berlin writing songs. They knew it boosted morale like nothing else. He put together a musical revue he called “Yip Yip Yaphank”, so successful that it went to Broadway. After the war, Berlin became an impresario in the civilian world. He built the Music Box Theater and collaborated with the Shubert organization. He was a very astute businessman by now and he was known for protecting his work product.
As always throughout his life, his own emotions drove his work. He wrote “Always” for his second wife, Ellin Mckay, and gave it and all rights to it to her for life. “Blue Skies” was his reaction to his first child’s birth. You cannot imagine the 20th Century without the music of Irving Berlin - songs that brought people together, (sometimes brought them back together), songs of love, songs of joy, songs of sadness, songs of abandon. His contributions to the movie industry are countless. Imagine Fred and Ginger without him - impossible.
All his life, Irving Berlin was a strong supporter of civil rights and a great American patriot. He never forgot his early life or old friends. It is said he often visited his old neighborhood on foot. He once said, “Every man should have a Lower East Side in his life.” He never forgot what it was like to be without a home, to be cold and hungry.
For over 60 years more Irving Berlin continued to write and publish music. He died in 1989 of natural causes, at age 101. Over the years he inspired the admiration of our greatest songwriters and musicians, including Isaac Stern, who said of him, “. . . American music was born at his piano.”
Enough talk. Here is some music:
Cheek to Cheek (Astaire and Rogers):: https://www.bing.com/search?q=cheek+to+cheek+fred+astaire&qs=SS&pq=cheek+to+cheek&sk=LS1&sc=8-14&cvid=FE573136B49541FA9DDF0CCBA352087A&FORM=QBRE&sp=2&ghc=1
Soft Lights and Sweet Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaU7Pca0ykA
Let’s Face the Music and Dance (Astaire and Rogers)::
When I Lost You (with Frank Sinatra):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAdNugBVVIo
All By Myself (with Bobby Darin)::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyTjkVHOCVQ
Okay - I gotta do this - it just goes to show how deathless is the work of Berlin. First we have the “Puttin’ on the Ritz” of Fred Astaire (1930).
Next, P.G. Wodehouse’s “Bertie Wooster” is finding the song a challenge (Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zO9axGrzDE0
Now, here is “Puttin’ on the Ritz” played by Herb Alpert:
Always (just piano here - played by SHIRIN):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOk2Vc1lgVo
And so many more . . . google some of your favorites. There are enough to keep you singing for a long, long time. I’ll end with his love song to America. It seems appropriate. This version features Berling himself, on the Ed Sullivan Show, with the able assistance of some American kids. Was it really that long ago that we loved our country?
God Bless America (sung by Irving Berlin):
https://www.irvingberlin.com/videos
I hope you enjoyed another brief escape from 2020!
Comments? (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
DakotaBeacon