Revisiting Irving Berlin
The King of Tin Pan Alley
Ask me to tell you what my favorite song is and I will not be able to give you an answer. And that includes hymns. I have probably got fifty “favorite” hymns, maybe more. And those are just my very favorites, among hundreds of hymns I love. So after waiting for nearly three years for Tony to write about the word, “music,” I found myself lost in an embarrassment of riches from which to select our song this week. I mean, every great song is about the music!
One of our readers commented on Thursday that she had expected us to feature “The Sound of Music” this week. And we certainly thought of it. But I mentioned to her that my column, Sometimes a Song, often takes me into the realm of songs from musicals. So, not to overlap too much, we chose for this week not a musical, per se, but a very beautiful story in film about the power of — and thoroughly interwoven with — music.
And like “Do, a Deer,” that brings me back to where I began, unable to choose a “music” song for today! So I hope that you won’t mind hearing again about the defining music man of the 20th century, Irving Berlin and ONE of my favorite of his many great songs, “Play (for me) a Simple Melody.” But I’m also including below his excellent “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” which he wrote specifically for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to do in their film, “Follow the Fleet.” If you haven’t seen that film, I hope you will enjoy both the song and the clip from the film featuring Fred and Ginger dancing to it.
It’s a great gift for me an excuse to talk about perhaps the most beloved American songwriter of the first half, if not all of the 20th Century, Irving Berlin. That Irving Berlin was a tremendous natural talent goes without saying, but it is notable to recall always that he had no formal musical training and only later in life learned to read standard musical notation. But after all, in music everything is about the ear. Most people who can read and play musical notation with fluency — and this includes the very finest singers and musicians — do not have the composer’s gift of hearing with the mind’s ear music which has never yet been heard, much less written down. But as is the case with artists in other areas, a composer’s ear must be developed by much experience with his art, and for Berlin the significant musical training he did receive was that of constant immersion from earliest childhood on.
Irving Berlin grew up in a place and time which was steeped in melodies and music of all kinds and from many lands and cultures. As a child he arrived with his parents smack dab in the heart of that wonderful American melting pot, where as diverse a collection of musical styles possible was percolating in the stew of New York City popular culture. When five-year-old Irving ‘s family arrived in the United States — refugees from the Russian pogroms of the late 19th century — an African-American style called Ragtime was in full flower, with notable music being composed by the likes of Scott Joplin. Vaudeville was bringing show tunes and novelty acts to cities and small towns across the land. And a new style of music called “jazz” was budding and was about to bloom and change EVERYTHING about American popular music.
From youth on, Irving Berlin was in the thick of things, and music was being written, performed, and bought and sold on every street corner. He quit school at age 13 and found work at a music hall, where in his off hours he taught himself to play the piano, and in an ingenious way, using only the black keys, a technique that he employed for his entire career (see video below). By age 15 he was hawking his song lyrics to the many sheet music publishers in Tin Pan Alley and working as a song plugger. In 1911 at age 23, his own “rag” — a little tune many of you surely know, called “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” — took not only the United States but the world by storm. That rag inspired an international dance craze, and attracted the attention of the famed Vaudeville dance team, Vernon and Irene Castle. With them as his stars, Berlin wrote and produced his first Broadway show in 1914, a “rag review,” called “Watch Your Step.” And for that show staring the Castles, he wrote today’s song — a complex piece of counterpoint intertwining two separate tunes, with the ironic name, “Play for Me a Simple Melody.” Variety Magazine dubbed “Watch Your Step” a "terrific hit" and said of Irving Berlin, "That youthful marvel of syncopated melody is proving things in Watch Your Step: that he is not alone a ‘rag composer,’ and that he is one of the greatest lyric writers America has ever produced.” Variety hit the mark with that assessment. And Irving Berlin had at the time hardly begun his career!
I hope you all enjoy this “simple melody” from one of the shining stars of American popular music, and the treat of hearing and seeing a superb performance of his “Let’s Face the Music” for Fred and Ginger.
Thanks. Just forwarded song off to the grands to enjoy with their Saturday morning pancakes.
Great selections for Sometimes a Song (and, for this week, Dance)!
Berlin's songs are a national treasure of melodies and lyrics, which generations of music lovers in all walks of life have been able to sing or hum without using rough vocal effects or constricted, strangulated vocal cords. The flow and gracefulness of Astaire's and Rogers's harmonious dancing brings to my mind a warm, gentle breeze rippling the surface of a rural stream or rustling the leaves of a stand of oaks or maples.
The music and dance of our parents' generation, between the world wars, helped relieve and elevate spirits. Seeing and hearing, and sometimes even participating in, such expressions, perhaps gave hope to many folks, enabling them to imagine that they, too, could be unburdened by life's trials, especially during The Great Depression and during the War. Between the 1890s and mid-20th. Century, many small towns had bands featuring brass, wind, and percussion instruments, which gladdened the hearts of the folks who lived there. Those bands, as well as traveling vaudeville troupes, were a big time, and rightfully so. As for dancing, Dad believed, even during his teens, that the ability of men and women to interact through ballroom dancing was one of the social graces, regardless of one's station in life. Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly were two of his favorite dancers, whom he tried to emulate. Both he and my Mom had beautiful singing voices.
Regarding the film, "Follow the Fleet", I'm struck by its release-date of 1936, when we were in the throes of a deep, national and worldwide depression, with no end in sight, and by its storyline. The man and woman in my profile picture are my Mom and Dad, living in a rural county of Kentucky in the Summer of 1936, just a few months before they married. Dad was a few months past 21, serving in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Mom was a few months shy of 16, about to enter her senior year of high school (having skipped a grade); she remembers that she paid $1.98 for the dress and a 3 or 4 dollars for the shoes, which she wore in the photo. A few years later, Dad was serving with the fleet on a destroyer in the Central Pacific, and Mom and my brother and sister were awaiting his return home.
I hope you'll forgive me for such a long comment. Thank you for your patience in reading it. I hope your and Dr. Esolen's labor of love with this magazine continues long into the future.