Irving Berlin : American troubadour / Edward Jablonski.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jablonski, Edward.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Berlin, Irving, 1888-1989.

Berlin, Irving.

Composers--United States--Biography.

Composers.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 406 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Henry Holt, 1999.

Summary:

Although he could play piano in only one key and never learned to read music, or to transcribe it, Irving Berlin wrote some 1,500 songs, dozens of them part of the enduring body of Broadway lore. A prolific combination of genius and schmaltz, he was dubbed "America's Franz Schubert" by George Gershwin, but another contemporary, Jerome Kern, was more definite: "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American Music."

Indeed, this great Jewish composer commemorated America's principal Christian holidays with "White Christmas" and "Easter Parade." He celebrated the nation itself with "God Bless America," a hymn so popular that it has become virtually a second national anthem.

Irving Berlin was born in czarist Russia in 1888. His family immigrated to America in 1893 and settled in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side. Running away from home at age thirteen, he worked as a busker in the flamboyantly disreputable Bowery bars. He tried his hand on Broadway, was a singing waiter in Chinatown, and was also hired as a song plugger and lyricist for a Tin Pan Alley music publisher.

So begins one of the biggest success stories of twentieth-century popular music. Berlin's first writing credit was for the lyrics of the 1907 song "Marie from Sunny Italy." His first landmark hit came in 1911 with the publication of "Alexander's Ragtime Band," and in 1919 Berlin celebrated the formation of his own music publishing firm with "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody." Irrepressible classics that followed include "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," "Cheek to Cheek," "This Is the Army, Mr. Jones," and "There's No Business Like Show Business." These and many more were part of his output for Hollywood and Broadway. Among his firm credits are three Astaire and Rogers romps--Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, and Carefree--and his Broadway shows include As Thousands Cheer, This Is the Army, Annie Get Your Gun, and Call Me Madam.

Irving Berlin died in 1989 at the age of one hundred and one. His life was the rags-to-riches story of an American century. Edward Jablonski, a consummate storyteller, recounts Berlin's life with the same contagious enthusiasm and musicological insight that made his Gershwin the definitive biography. Furthermore, Jablonski's personal acquaintance with Berlin and all the major figures in Berlin's circle serves to enrich his account and help him come the closest yet to explaining how Irving Berlin became the personification of American musical theater.

Contents:

Prelude: Golden Shore 3

1 The Bow'ry 18

2 Wandering Minstrel 40

3 Up and Down Broadway 61

4 This is the Army, Mr. B 75

5 The Music Boxes 84

6 Facing the Music 105

7 Cross-Country Trauma 135

8 Comeback 148

9 New Deal 167

10 Twice in a Lifetime 197

11 Old-Fashioned Smash 230

12 There's No Business 247

13 Gray Skies 273

14 Swan Songs? 288

Coda: A Hundred and One 316

1. The Songs of Irving berlin 335

2. Representative Recordings 362

3. Irving Berlin Films on Videocassette 367

Sources 371.

Notes:

Includes discography (pages 362-367), filmography (pages 367-369), bibliographical references (pages 371-378), and index.

ISBN:

0805040773

OCLC:

38478417