The following material has been excerpted from Wikipedia.com:
Irving Berlin was born Israel Baline on May 11, 1888, one of eight children of Moses and Lena Lipkin Baline. His birthplace was a village in Russia, now Belarus. His father was a cantor and after a pogrom (violent attack) destroyed their village the family left Russia and found their way to the Lower East Side in New York City. They eventually settled on Cherry Street and unable to find work as a cantor, Moses took a job at a kosher meat market and gave Hebrew lessons on the side and struggled to support his family. He died a few years later when Irving was 8 years old and so Irving took to the streets to help support the family. He became a newspaper boy, hawking The Evening Journal. His mother took jobs as a midwife and three of his sisters found work wrapping cigars. His older brother worked in a sweatshop assembling shirts. When Iring quit school to sell newspapers in the Bowery he could hear the music from the cafes, saloons and restaurants lining the streets. He found that when he sang some of the songs while selling papers on street corners, some people would toss him coins in appreciation. He confessed to his mother his ambitiopn to become a singing waiter in a saloon.
With few survival skills and little education, Irving realized that formal employment was out of the question. His only ability was one he acquired from his late father's vocation: singing. He joined with a few other youngsters and went to saloons on the Bowery to sing to customers. Such groups were a common feature of the Lower East Side. He would sing a few of the popular ballads he heard and memorized on the street, hoping that customers would pitch some money in his direction. Music became his sole source of income and he emerged from the ghetto lifestyle learning the language of the street. He began to recognize the kind of songs that appealed to audiences and he started plugging songs at Tony Pastor's Music Hall in Union Square. Finally in 1906 when he was 18, working at the Pelham Cafe in Chinatown as a singing waiter. Besides serving drinks, he made up 'blue' parodies of hit songs of the day. In his free time, he taught himself to play the piano and after the bar closed, he'd sit at a piano in the back and pick out tunes. His first attempt at songwriting was "Marie From Sunny Italy," written in collaboration with the Pelham's resident pianist, Mike Nicholson, and at the same time began using the name Irving Berlin, being easier for others to remember. One night, after singing a set of songs by George M. Cohan, the Irish owner of the saloon is reported to have said, "You know what you are, me boy? You're the Yiddeshe Yankee Doodle!"
Max Winslow, a staff member at music publisher Harry Von Tilzer Company, noticed Berlin's singing on several occasions and became so taken with his talent that he tried to get him a job with his firm. In 1908, at the age of 20, Berlin took a new job in the Union Square neighborhood. There he was able to collaborate with other young songwriters, such as Edgar Leslie, Ted Snyder, Al Piantadosi and George Whiting, and in 1909, he got his first big break as a staff lyricist with the Ted Snyder Company. From this position, Berlin's meteoric rise as a songwriter began with his first world famous hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," in 1911. He became the feature performer later that year at Oscar Hammerstein's vaudeville house, where Berlin introduced dozens of other songs to the audience. Despite its success "Alexander's Ragtime Band" wasn't initially recognized as a hit but was included in Broadway producer Jesse Lasky's "Folies" show. After a number of performances as an instrumental, the song still didn't impress audiences and was soon dropped from the show's score. But, later that year, after writing lyrics to the music, it played again in another Broadway Review and Variety news weekly proclaimed the song "the musical sensation of the decade. Composer George Gershwin, foreseeing its influence, said, "The first real American musical work is 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.' Berlin has shown us the way; it was now easier to attain our ideal."
The international success of "Alexander's Ragtime Band," gave ragtime new life and sparked a national dance craze. Two dancers who expressed that craze were Irene and Vernon Castle. In 1914, Berlin wrote a ragtime review, "Watch Your Step," which starred the couple and showcased their talents on stage. That musical review became Berlin's first complete score. Variety called it "the first syncopated musical where the sets and the girls were gorgeous."
In future years, Berlin made every effort to write lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, once stateing: "My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American, not the highbrow nor the lowbrow but that vast intermediate crew which is the real soul of the country. The highbrow is likely to be superficial, overtrained, supersensitive. The lowbrow is warped, subnormal. My public is the real people."
Berlin also created songs out of his own sadness. In 1912, he married Dorothy Goetz, the sister of songwriter E. Ray Goetz. She died six months later of typhoid fever contracted during their honeymoon in Havana. The song he wrote to express his grief, "When I Lost You," was his first ballad. It was an immediate popular hit and sold more than a million copies. In 1916, he collaborated with Victor Herbert on the score of "The Country Girl."
He realized that the slang of ragtime would be an inappropriate idiom for serious romantic expression and over the next few years would begin to adapt his style by writing more love songs. In 1915, he wrote the hit, "I Love A Piano," which was an erotic, but comical, ragtime love song.
By 1918 he had written hundreds of songs, mostly topical, which enjoyed brief popularity. Many of the songs were for the new dances then appearing. After a Hawaiian dance craze began, he wrote "That Hula-Hula," and then did a string of Southern songs, such as "When The Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves For Alabam." One of the key songs that Berlin wrote in his transition from ragtime to lyrical ballads was "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody," which was considered one of Berlin's first smashes. The song was written for Ziegfeld's Follies of 1918 and became the musical's leading song. It's popularity was so great that it became the theme for all of Ziegfeld's revues, and later the theme song in the 1936 film The Great Ziegfeld.
On April 1, 1917 America formally entered World War I and Tin Pan Alley would do its duty and support the slogan at the time that "Music is essential to win the war." Berlin joined the effort and wrote, "For Your Country And My Country." He joined with George Meyer and his old colleague, Edgar Leslie, in a song that demanded an end to ethnicity: "Let's All Be Americans Now."
In 1917, Berlin was drafted into the Army whose goal was to have him write songs of patrotism and while stationed at Camp Upton in New York, he composed an all-soldier musical review titled, "Yip, Yip Yaphank." By the following summer that show was taken to Broadway where it also included a number of hits, including "Mandy" and "Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning," which he performed himself. The shows earned $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, he would introduce twenty years later: "God Bless America."
Berlin returned to Tin Pan Alley after the war and in 1921 created a partnership with Sam Harris to build the Music Box Theater. He maintained an interest in this theater throughout his life, and even in his last years was known to call his partner, The Shubert Organization, to check on the receipts. In his early years, the theater was a showcase for revues by Berlin. As theater owner, producer and composer, he looked after every detail of his shows, from the costumes and sets to the casting and musical arrangements. Located at 239 West 45th Street, the theater was the only Broadway house built to accommodate the works of a songwriter. It was the home of Berlin's "Music Box Review" from 1921 to 1925 and "As Thousands Cheer" in 1933 and today includes an exhibition devoted to Berlin in its lobby. By 1926, Berlin had written the scores to two editions of the Ziegfeld Follies and four "Music Box Revues."
"What'll I Do?" was a #1 hit for Paul Whiteman and had 5 other renditions in 1924. Twenty-four years later the song went to #22 for Nat Cole and #23 for Frank Sinatra. It ranks high on the personal favorite list when folks think in terms of the Great American Songbook.
"Always" was written in 1925 when Berlin fell in love with Ellen MacKay who later became his wife. The song became two #1's (for Vincent Lopez and George Olsen) in its first incarnation. There were 4 more hit versions in 1944-45. In 1959 Sammy Turner took the song to #2 on the R&B chart. It became Patsy Cline's post mortem anthem and hit #18 on the country chart in 1980, 17 years after her death, and a tribute musical called "Patsy Cline...Always," played a two-year Nashville run that ended in 1995.
"Blue Skies" was written in 1926 after his first daughter's birth as a song just for her and was #1 for Ben Selvin with 5 other hits in 1927, besides being the first song performed by Al Jolson in the first feature sound film, "The Jazz Singer" that same year. In 1946 it returned to the top 10 on the charts with Count Basie and Benny Goodman. In 1978, Willie Nelson made the song a #1 country hit--52 years after it was written.
"Marie" was written in 1929 and was a waltz-time hit that became #2 by Rudy Vallee and in 1937 reached #1 with Tommy Dorsey. It was again in the charts in 1953 and a #15 for The Bachelors in 1965--36 years after its first appearance.
"Puttin' On The Ritz" from 1930 is associated with Fred Astaire who danced to it in the 1946 film "Blue Skies." It was first sung by Harry Richman in 1930 and became a #1 hit, and in 1939 Clark Gable sang it in the movie "Idiot's Delight." More recently it had a featured spot in the Mel Brooks film "Young Frankenstein," as a duet song and dance number with Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle.
"Say It Isn't So" dates back to 1930. Rudy Vallee oerformed it on his radio show and it became a #1 hit for George Olsen and awarded top-10 positions with versions by Connee Boswell and Ozzie Nelson's band. In 1963, Aretha Franklin produced a single of the song, 31 years after its introduction.
"I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm" was performed by Dick Powell in the 1937 film "On The Avenue." Later, it had 4 top-12 versions, including Billie Holiday and Les Browen, who took it to #1.
"God Bless America" was written by Berlin in 1918 and filed away until 1938, when Kate Smith's manager, Ted Collins asked Berlin if he had a patriotic song Smith might sing to mark the 20th anniversary of Armistice Day. It quickly became the second National Anthem after America entered Worl War II. Over the decades, the song has earned millions for the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, to whom Berlin assigned all royalties. The phrase "God Bless America" was taken from Berlin's mother during Berlin's growing up on the Lower East Side. On the afternoon of September 11, 2001, U.S. Senators and Congressmen stood on the steps of the Capitol and sang it after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Two nights later, when Broadway turned its lights back on, the casts of numerous shows led theatergoers in renditions of the same song. At an official requiem at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the song was played by the U.S. Army Orchestra. The following Monday, to mark the reopening of the New York Stock Exchange, Governor George Pataki and Mayor Rudolph Guiliani joined traders in singing it. That evening, as major league baseball resumed around the country, "God Bless America" replaced the traditional 7th inning stretch rendition of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." Over the following weeks it seemed as if the whole country was singing "God Bless America."
Although most of his works for the Broadway stage were in the form of revues, Berlin also wrote a number of book shows. The Cocoanuts (1925) was a light comedy with a cast featuring, among others, The Marx Brothers. Face The Music (1932) was a political satire with a book by Moss Hart while Louisiana Purchase (1940) was a satire of a Southern politician, obviously based on the exploits of Huey Long. As Thousands Cheer (1933) was a revue, also with a book by Moss Hart, with a theme: each number was presented as an item in a newspaper, some of them touching on issues of the day. The show yielded a succession of hit songs, including "Easter Parade", "Heat Wave", "Harlem On My Mind", and "Supper Time", a song about racial bigotry that was sung by Ethel Waters.
When the U.S. joined Worl War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Berlin immediately began composing a number of patritoic songs. Treasury Secretary Henry Morganthau requested a song to inspire Americans to buy war bonds for which he wriote "Any Bonds Today?" He assigned all royalties to the U.S. Treasury Department. He then wrote songs for various government agencies and likewise assigned all profits to them: "Angels Of Mercy" for the American Red Cross, "Arms For The Love Of America," for the Army Ordnance Department, and "I Paid My Taxes Today," again to Treasury.
Probably his most notable and valuable contributuion to the war effort was a stage show he wrote called "This Is The Army." It was taken to Broadway and then on to Washington, D.C. It was eventually shown at military bases throughout the world, sometimes in close proximity to battle zones. Berlin wrote nearly three dozen songs of the show which contained a cast of 300 men. He supervised the production and traveled with it, always singing, "Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning." The show kept him away from his family for 3 1/2 years during which time he took neither salary nor expenses and turned over all profits to the Army Emergency Relief Fund. The play was adapted into a movie of the same name in 1943, directed by Michael Curtiz and costarring Ronald Reagan, then an army lieutenant. Kate Smith also sang "God Bless America" in the film. The show became a hit movie and a morale-boosting road show that toured the battlefronts of Europe. The shows and movie combined raised more than $10 million for the Army and in recognition of his contributions to troop morale he was awarded the Medal Of Merit by President Harry S. Truman.
After returning home from 3 1/2 years on the road doing "This Is The Army," he was exhausted, and being 58 years old, in need of rest. But his old friend, Jerome Kern, who was the composer for "Annie Get Your Gun," suddenly died of a heart attack. Producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II persuaded Berlin to take over composing the score.
Loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the music and lyrics were composed by Berlin, with a book by Herbert Fields and his sister, Dorothy Fields. At first he refused the job but the show ran for 1,147 performances and became his most successful score. It is said that the showstopper song, "There's No Business Like Show Business", was almost left out of the show altogether.
Historian and composer Alec Wilder noted the difference between this score and Berlin's much earlier works: "To hear...that 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' (1911) was the hit of Vienna and probably every large city in Europe by late 1912, and then to realize that the writer of this song, forty years later, wrote the nearly perfect score of Annie Get Your Gun, comes as a profound shock."
Annie Get You Gun is considered to be Berlin's best musical theatre score not only because of the number of hits it contains, but because its songs successfully combine character and plot development. The song "There's No Business Like Show Business" became Ethel Merman's trademark.
Berlin's next show, Miss Liberty (1949) was disappointing, but Call Me Madam in 1950, starring Ethel Merman as the famous Washington hostess, Perle Mesta fared better, giving him his second greatest success. After a failed attempt at retirement in 1962, at the age of 74, he returned to Broadway with Mr. President. It ran for 8 months and did not become a successful show.
On the other hand, of course Berlin was also writing songs for films. In 1922, Madame Butterfly was his first film composing gig. In 1927, his song, "Blue Skies", was featured in the first feature-length talkie, The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson. Later, movies like Top Hat (1935) became the first of a series of distinctive film musicals by Berlin starring performers like Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Ginger Rogers and Alice Faye to name just a few. These films are seen fairly regularly on TV screens on Turner Classic Movies. The properties usually
had light romantic plots and a seemingly endless string of his new and old songs. Similar films include On The Avenue (1937), Gold Diggers In Paris (1938), Holiday Inn (1942), Blue Skies (1946), and Easter Parade (1948) with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.
"White Christmas" (1942) was introduced in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, and is one of the most recorded songs in history. First sung in the film by Bing Crosby and as a duet with Marjorie Reynolds and Crosby, it sold over 30 million records and stayed #1 on the pop and R&B charts for 10 weeks. Crosby's was the best-selling single in any music category for more than fifty (50) years. "White Christmas" won Berlin the Academy Award for Best Music in an original song, one of seven Oscar nominations he received during his career. In subsequent years, this song was re-recorded and became a top-10 seller for numerous artists including Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford, Ernest Tubb, The Ravens, and The Drifters. It would also be the last time a Berlin song went to #1 upon it's release. The song has also been adapted to film starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen and the film adapted to the musical stage as a holiday show at the Radio City Music Hall.
Composer George Gershwin wrote, "I have learned many things from Irving Berlin, but the most precious lesson has been that ragtime or jazz, as its more developed state was later called--was the only musical idiom in existance that could aptly express America,"
Irving Berlin died in his sleep on September 22, 1989 in New York City. He was 101 years of age. The New York Times, after his death, wrote, "Irving Berlin set the tone and the tempo for the tunes America played and sang and danced to for much of the 20th century." During his career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs and was a legend by the time he turned 30. He went on to write the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated for Academy Awards on eight occasions.
In a letter to Alexander Woolcott who was writing a biography of Berlin, Jerome Kern offered what one writer has said, "may be the last word" on the significance of Irving Berlin:
"Irving Berlin has no place in American music--he is American music."
song title: A Fella With An Umbrella Click Here for YouTube video clip
song title: After You Get What You Want You Don't Want It (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Alexander's Ragtime Band (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Always (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
"When a man writes a song and he says, 'Not for just an hour, not for just a day, not for just a year, but always,' that's as simple and as pure as anybody can write a piece of prose or a pop song."-Frank Sinatra
song title: A Man Chases A Girl (Click Here for YouTube video clip: Donald O'Connor)
song title: All Alone (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Be Careful, It's My Heart (Click Here for YouTube video clip: Bing Crosby)
song title: Blue Skies (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Change Partners (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Cheek To Cheek (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Coquette
song title: Count Your Blessings Instead Of Sheep (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Easter Parade (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Fools Fall In Love (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: How Deep Is The Ocean (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Heat Wave (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: How Many Times (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: I Got Lost In His Arms (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: I'm Beginning To Miss You
song title: I've Got The Sun In The Morning (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: (Just One Way To Say) I Love You
song title: It Only Happens When I Dance With You (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: I Never Had A Chance
song title: I Used To Be Color Blind (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song tilte: I'd Rather Lead A Band (Click Hear For YouTube audio clip)
song title: I'm Putting All My Eggs In One Basket (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Isn't This A Lovely Day (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Looking At You (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Let's Take An Old Fashioned Walk (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Let Yourself Go (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Love And The Weather
song title: Marie (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: My Walking Stick (Click Here for YouTube audio clip: The Mills Brothers)
song title: No Strings (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Pullman Porters Parade (Click Here for YouTube audio clip: Al Jolson)
music by Maurice Abrahams
lyric by Irving Berlin as Ren G. May
song title: Remember (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Russian Lullaby (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Say It Isn't So (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: ShakingThe Blues Away (Click Here for YouTube video clip: Ann Miller)
song title: Some Sunny Day (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Supper Time (Click Here for YouTube audio clip of Miss Ethel Waters)
song title: Soft Lights And Sweet Music (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: Steppin' Out With My Baby (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: The Freedom Train
song title: The Best Thing For You (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: They Say It's Wonderful (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: The Girl That I Marry (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: The Song Is Ended (Click Here for YouTube sudio clip)
song title: This Is The Army, Mr. Jones (Click Here for YouTube audio clip: Irving Berlin)
song title: This Year's Kisses (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: The Yam (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: The Piccolino (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: Top Hat, White Tie And Tails (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: With You
song title: White Christmas (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: When I Leave The World Behind (Click Here for YouTube audio clip)
song title: When Winter Comes
song title: What'll I Do (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: We Saw The Sea (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: You Forgot To Remember
song title: You Keep Coming Back Like A Song (Click Here for YouTube video clip)
song title: You're Lonely And I'm Lonely
