Irving Berlin Songs: Music to America’s Ears

(L-R) Berlin with film stars Alice Faye, Tyrone Power, and Don Ameche singing chorus from "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938). Public Domain

Israel Beilin wrote more popular music than any other composer in the 20th century, but he was a songwriting paradox.

He had no music training and never learned to read music. Beilin only played the piano in one key, F-sharp, though he had a special piano made that allowed him to make key changes with a special transposing lever underneath the keyboard. Still, he had a keen ear for popular songs and wrote an estimated 1,500 songs during a career spanning decades.

Irving Berlin, at age 18, at his first job with a music publisher. Public Domain

English wasn’t his native language, yet Beilin was a gifted lyricist who wielded words like a melodic Shakespeare. He was astonishingly versatile, with a seemingly innate ability to compose waltzes, marches, swing music, country-folk and bolero music.

In over six decades, he was as comfortable writing music for Hollywood as he was for Broadway. He wrote the best-selling single of all time according to Guiness, “White Christmas,” and composed “God Bless America,” often considered America’s second national anthem.

Beilin’s work was unique and his songs were simple, sentimental, and as American as apple pie. As his songwriting contemporary Jerome Kern said about him, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music.”

Irving Berlin with his wife Ellin, circa 1926. Public Domain

Tin Pan Alley

Beilin was just 5 years old when his parents and seven siblings fled Jewish persecution in present day Belarus and emigrated to New York City’s Lower East Side. In the 1890s, the area was awash in diverse music, from religious hymns and ethnic spirituals to commercial ditties and brass band marches.

Young Beilin soaked it all in like a sponge, and by the time his father Moses passed away when he was a teen, he struck out on his own, supporting himself as a singing waiter at the Pelham Café in Chinatown and performing popular songs at informal venues.

Beilin wrote his first major commercial hit at age 23 in 1911, but, by then, he had changed his name to Irving Berlin due to concerns about anti-Semitism in entertainment circles. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sold a million copies of sheet music in three months, 1.5 million in the first 18 months,  and was the most popular song of its time.

In 1912, Berlin became a partner in one of the biggest popular music sheet publishers in the country, the Ted Snyder Company. Berlin had been a staff lyricist for the company, which after Berlin became a partner, was renamed Waterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc.

That same year, the up-and-coming songwriter’s personal and professional life experienced tragedy following his marriage to Dorothy Goetz. During their Cuban honeymoon Berlin’s bride contracted typhoid fever and died six months later. A devastated Berlin paid homage to his wife when he penned “When I Lost You,” a song later recorded by Frank Sinatra and Jim Reeves, which critics believed elevated Berlin’s reputation as a major songwriter.

In 1917, before turning 30 and after his music garnered fame in New York and London, Berlin established Irving Berlin Music, Inc., a move that allowed him to call his own tune by giving him control over his own profits and full autonomy over his creative decisions. At this same time, he also pioneered The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), an organization protecting the rights and royalties of songwriters.

The Marx brothers (L–R): Zeppo, Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, in “The Cocoanuts.” Paramount Pictures

There’s No Business Like Show Business

Berlin’s songwriting reputation matured simultaneously with Broadway’s rise to prominence. He had contributed to Broadway music since 1914, but when he became a U.S. Army private after earning his citizenship, the fervently patriotic Berlin created a musical revue about military life called “Yip, Yip, Yaphank.” In the revue, Berlin supervised hundreds of active duty soldiers amid rehearsals in a potato field in Yaphank, Long Island before moving to Broadway for a 32-show run.

After the war, Berlin hit the right note again after writing scores for the Ziegfeld Follies in 1919 and 1920. In 1921, he joined with entrepreneur Sam Harris to open their own venue, the Music Box Theatre on West 45th Street in New York.

In 1924, Berlin met Ellin Mackay, the daughter of Irish-Catholic millionaire Clarence Mackay. Fifteen years Berlin’s junior, the couple married in 1926 despite her father’s objections to the religious and age differences between the two. Mackay disinherited his daughter, but the couple remained married for 62 years until Ellin’s passing in 1988. Coincidentally, Mackay lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929, while Berlin’s investments in his own musical copyrights not only supported him and his wife during the Depression, but allowed them to prosper.

One of Berlin’s most challenging feats on Broadway was composing a music score for Cocoanuts, a musical built around the comedy of the Marx Brothers. With that score, Berlin again struck a popular chord when it became a hit in New York and London, and was one of the first Broadway musicals to be filmed with sound in 1929.

Berlin wrote complete scores for 17 original Broadway shows including “As Thousands Cheer” (1933), “This Is the Army” (1942), and “Mister President” (1962). He also contributed to six more shows.

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, in "Top Hat." RKO Radio Pictures

Hollywood Beckons                                

Broadway hit a sour note during the Great Depression, but fortunately for Berlin, talking pictures had become a reality a few years before and he joined with other songwriters to ply his talent in the new motion picture industry. In Hollywood, Berlin’s music complemented the popular pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in “Top Hat,” one of the most popular films of the 1930s. He later collaborated on two more musicals with Astaire and Rogers before writing musicals popularized by stars like Bing Crosby (“Holiday Inn,” “White Christmas”) and Ethel Merman (“Annie Get Your Gun,” “Call Me Madam”).

Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, in "Easter Parade." Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

He wrote scores for 15 original Hollywood films, just a few being “Follow the Fleet,” “On the Avenue,” “Blue Skies,” and “Easter Parade.” Hundreds of films have used his music over the decades, including 1974’s “Young Frankenstein” and “The Great Gatsby.”

Berlin lived to age 101, dying in his sleep at his Manhattan town house on Sept. 22, 1989. In remembrance, marquee lights on Broadway were dimmed before curtain time the evening following his death.

His genius ran deeper than the creation of memorable melodies and heartfelt lyrics. Irving Berlin’s genius was his ability to tap into the passion and character of his fellow Americans and memorialize those into song.

No one has ever done it better and maybe never will.

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