What song could be more appropriate for the season of thanksgiving than the sweet and simple and uplifting “Count Your Blessings,” by Irving Berlin?
When I'm worried and I can't sleep I count my blessings instead of sheep And I fall asleep counting my blessings. When my bankroll is getting small I think of when I had none at all And I fall asleep counting my blessings. I think about a nursery and I picture curly heads, And one by one I count them as they slumber in their beds, If you're worried and you can't sleep, Just count your blessings instead of sheep, And you'll fall asleep counting your blessings.
Unlike most of the immigrant composers and songwriters whose work we have been revisiting for Sometimes a Song, Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin) had virtually no formal musical training. Refugees from the Russian pogroms of the late 19th century, Berlin’s family fled to the United States, having lost everything but their lives to the ravages of anti-Semitic madness. Israel was young boy when he saw his home set on fire, and he and recalled awaking on the street the next morning to see his home reduced to ashes. He was five years old when he arrived in the US, and thirteen when his father passed away, leaving the family utterly destitute. Though he had been working odd jobs for most of his childhood, by age fourteen Izzy considered himself more of a burden than a help to his family. And so about a year after his father’s death, he left home and set out to scrabble up a living for himself among the hoards of immigrants and other down-and-outers living in seedy lodgings and flophouses in the Bowery. In 1907 at age 19, Izzy published his first song, and sold the rights to it for a whopping thirty-three cents — about $30 in today’s value, but still a small sum, indeed. (That song, by the way, due to a typesetting error on the sheet music, changed his name from Beilin to Berlin.)
Like many of his Tin Pan Alley counterparts, Izzy was a cantor’s son, and so rather naturally sought out work as a singer in clubs and music halls in lower Manhattan, where he gained a first-rate and a rather “hands-on” musical education and honed his talent for songwriting. At one of the clubs where he worked, he stayed after hours working late into the wee hours teaching himself to play the piano, which he did, by ear, using primarily the black keys, and composing all of his tunes in the key of F sharp. Only late in his career did Irving Berlin master reading and writing in standard musical notation; instead, he did the bulk of his composing by ear, then dictating his songs to a music transcriptionist. But great as it was, Irving Berlin’s natural gift for music was not the secret of his success. He worked at his music long hours every day and composed over fifteen hundred songs over his long career, the royalties from many of which he assigned to civic organizations and charities. Most notably, though in his 50’s at the time, he served the US Army full-time during the second world war for over three years producing shows which contributed over ten million dollars to the war effort. For his sacrificial service, Irving Berlin was awarded the Medal of Merit, the highest award given to a civilian for raising moral among the troops.
What does the early suffering and great poverty of Irving Berlin have to do with this week’s song? It reveals more than a little about the songwriter and the national character of America, “the land that I love,” as he called it in the song he wrote and which has became our second national anthem, “God Bless America.” Imagine facing two world wars only a couple of decades apart, with a Great Depression adding deprivation to misery “in between times.” (Listen to the original recording of “Ain’t We Got Fun” by Irving Berlin’s friend, Richard Whiting). And yet, despite of — or perhaps because of — the widespread, often abject poverty which so many endured, they pressed on, making the most of the little they had, grateful for privilege of living in a free land. This gratitude comes through loud and clear in such songs as “Count Your Blessings,” written by a young man who rose from less-than-nothing to become one of the most beloved songwriters and personalities of the 20th century, not just in his adopted homeland, but around the world.
And so on this Thanksgiving weekend in 2022, and with Advent beginning tomorrow, I give you “Count Your Blessings,” by Irving Berlin. And for what we have received, may we all be truly grateful.
I hope I won't get banned for going slightly off-topic (though I think in the end this comment DOES veer back to the subject at hand in some sense, so maybe there's hope for me yet).
Just seeing the song's title (somehow I haven't known the song, or at least don't remember knowing it in the past) reminds me of one of my math/logic/paradox/philosophical-nerd wonderments (maybe Tony's original scholarly direction back in the day can add some insight to my quandary caused by the wonderment?)
See, here's the thing: Suppose we say that the purpose of the phrase "count your blessings" is to keep one from contemplating bad things. So one might consider a nice house, a loving mate, good health, and three children as -- let me see, that would be, um, one, two, three, fourfivesix -- six blessings and I have, in the time it took to do that calculation (along with the time spent with pleasant thoughts in contemplation about those six blessings), not thought about or contemplated any bad things.
But wait. Wouldn't just the fact that I have blessings to count be itself a blessing, since it has made me pleasantly counterfactual (Hmph! Like Humpty-Dumpty, I will arbitrarily make that five-syllable word mean "the blessingly fact of counting, in a good sense --so there!). So that means that in addition to those six "concrete" blessings, the person would also have one more, as it were, "abstract" blessing of having blessings to count, making a total of seven blessings overall. Sounds reasonable to me. And since it is my logical conundrum, and so I get to decide, there it is -- true!
Ok, but now here comes the kicker. Suppose we have a person who is severely lacking in blessings. In fact, let's assume that he is SO poorly blessed that he can't think of a single "concrete" blessing to his name. So the question is, can he still say that he has at least one blessing -- ie, that he has that abstract blessing of having blessings to count? For if he has it, then he can count it and there you go.
But can he count it in the first place? Therein lies the conundrum. I can't say it has kept me up nights wondering whether it "works out" or not, but it does give me pause at times. (Can you imagine what Angelee had to put up with all those years? Count your blessings.)
In any case, I suppose one might argue (not me, certainly, but perhaps someone "out there, somewhere") that the mere contemplation of that logical puzzle accomplishes the same effect of keeping one from contemplating other bad things, and so it still falls into that category of "abstract blessings".
EXCEPT. Yes, except. That is, can we say with any authority that contemplation about a likely unresolvable logical issues is NOT a bad thing (or even a neutral thing, let alone an outright good thing)? Not in my book, and trust me, I've contemplated many an unresolvable logical paradox, and I cannot, in good faith, say it has done me unquestionable good -- in fact, I strongly suspect that it has caused me to waste quite a bit valuable time in contemplation.
So. I guess that's pretty much it, except to turn this reply back to the song in question and relate my musings (admittedly only VERY vaguely) to the theme of the song itself, which seems to me PRECISELY to exist (ie, its implied admonishment to "count one's blessings") for the purpose of keeping someone from contemplating bad things.
There. Have I made it back safely to home plate?
This was so wonderful. Thank you.