Today’s Almanac-May 11, 2010--Part 2
Say happy birthday to Israel Isidore Baline, born May 11, 1888 in the city of Tyumen in the Ural Mountains 1200 miles west of Moscow. His father, a Canter, moved his family to the relative safety of the United States in 1893 after Cossacks burned the Jewish Quarter of Tyumen to the ground. Only three years later his father was dead and the eight year old boy had to quit school and work as a news butcher-a street peddling paper boy-for pennies a day. He left home at 14 to leave his mother one less mouth to feed and began to support himself singing for tips in saloons, eventually working up to being a song plugger at Tony Pastor’s seminal club. He changed his name to Irving Berlin and began to try his hand at songwriting. His first success was Alexander’s Rag Time Band in 1911which became a sensation after he wrote words to go with his music and got it placed in a Broadway review. Its fresh sound and syncopated rhythm set off a national rage for Rag time music, which had gone out of fashion a decade earlier. Self taught on the piano-he never could play in any key but F-and unable to read music, none-the-less he eagerly launched himself on a career as a songwriter. His first Broadway show, Watch You Step in 1914, starred dancing sensations Verne and Irene Castle and included several hits. He would continue to write for Broadway and films for the next 60 years producing an unrivaled string of hits that included, A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody, This is the Army Mr. Jones, Always, Blue Skies, God Bless America, Easter Parade, White Christmas, and There’s No Business Like Show Business to name just a few. In all Berlin wrote around 15,000 songs. Many of them are as fresh today as when first written and continue to be recorded by artists in a number of styles. Berlin died in his adopted home town of New York in 1989 at the age of 101.