Irving Berlin, American songwriter, died on 22nd Sept. 1989

We're a few days early with this one, but it's a chance to recognise one of the prime figures in the creation of the Great American Songbook. Jerome Kern was once asked to define Irving Berlin’s place in American Music. He simply replied that Berlin didn’t have a place in American music; “Irving Berlin is American music.” Irving Berlin was born in Belarus in 1988, the son of a rabbi and cantor, who emigrated to New York in 1993, and died when Irving was 13. He turned to busking, and became a singing waiter in Chinatown. In 1907 he wrote a song for the café owner for 37 cents, and a career was born. He had his first hit in 1911 with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”, the first of a huge catalogue of standards. Berlin was one of the few composers, along with Cole Porter, who wrote both tunes and lyrics, and his compositions include some of the best-known and successful songs of all time. “White Christmas”, originally written in 1940 and introduced by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds in the 1942 movie “Holiday Inn”, is widely recognised as the best-selling song of all time, and “God Bless America”, originally written in 1918 while Berlin was in the US Army at the end of the First World War, was revised and revived in 1938 as a peace song for Armistice Day. It has become an unofficial national anthem for many Americans. Berlin was a prolific writer for stage and screen. In 1927, his hit from the previous year “Blue Skies” was included in the first feature-length ‘talkie’, Al Jolson’s “Jazz Singer”. He wrote 17 complete scores for Broadway shows, his most successful probably being the relatively late “Annie Get Your Gun” in 1946 (“Anything you can do”, “There’s no business like show business”), and contributed scores to many Hollywood musical classics, such as Top Hat in 1935 (“Isn’t this a lovely day”, “Cheek to cheek”, “Top hat, white tie, and tails”), “Follow the Fleet” in 1936 (“Let yourself go”, “Let’s face the music and dance”) and many more. In the depression years from 1927-32, Berlin had hit a creative and commercial low point, but in 1932 Rudy Vallee recorded some of Berlin’s songs and he was back on track. That year he wrote “How deep is the ocean”, and it became a major hit, recorded by many different artists. Berlin named it as one if his top ten favourite compositions. “I’ve got my love to keep me warm” was written in 1937, and featured in the musical film “On The Avenue”, his first non-Astaire/Rodgers movie, starring Dick Powell and Alice Faye, and regarded as a an excellent example of the genre. Irving Berlin lived to see his 100^th birthday, which was celebrated with a special concert at Carnegie Hall, which featured many luminaries of popular music including Frank Sinatra. Berlin died in September 1989, aged 101. His music is widely represented in Acrobat’s catalogue – find them in the Titles listing.