Count Your Blessings

Irving Berlin

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 yo…