The Story of the Russian Immigrant Who Created America's Most Beloved Music"”Irving Berlin

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Learn more at att.com slash 5G network. And we continue with Our American Stories. He was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular, uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his stated aim being to reach the heart of the average American, whom he saw as the real soul of the country. Here to tell the story of Irving Berlin is bestselling author Lawrence Burgreen, who wrote the definitive biography as Thousands Cheer the Life of Irving Berlin.

Let's take a listen. People have wanted to write some sort of biography for a long time. And when I began, I thought he was dead. Most people thought he was dead.

Now, as it turns out, he lives about a quarter of a mile from where I live now on Beekman Place in the same neighborhood almost in Manhattan. But he'd been a recluse for so long, for decades. He was like Greta Garbo, I want to be alone.

It was like that. And he was not only a shut-in, he didn't communicate with people. And when he did, he was very, very cranky. And he really only talked to his doctor and his accountant. And by then, his wife was deceased.

And I think his daughter stayed away. It's sad because, you know, this was a great songwriter, a cultural hero, really an example of industriousness. But he suffered from mental illness, paranoia, senility, whatever you want to call it. I don't know how you would define it. And it became pronounced when he was about 60 years old after the failure of a Broadway show, Miss Liberty. So it extended for almost 40 years, 4-0.

I mean, it's incredible. So I was curious, what happened to Irving Berlin? How could this greatest of all American songwriters, Mike and Censys, apparently, you know, very charming, sensitive, bright person had become so reclusive. Also, I started hearing people explain, oh, yes, didn't you realize he was an opium addict?

Didn't you realize this? In the absence of information, these rumors crept in. They weren't true. The truth was both more everyday, which was his chronic depression, and there was just false. You know, there were you know, there were people who were envious of him or spite. You know, I was thinking when Paul McCartney at one point vanished from public view for a while and everybody thought he was dead. Then it turned out he wasn't. He was just taking a breather. You know, it was kind of like that. So I was intrigued by what had happened and how this person who was an untrained, self-taught musician became, as Alexandra Wilcott said, he is American music. So how did that happen?

So that was what I was curious about. I can get a sparrow with a bow and arrow. I can live on bread and cheese. And only on that, so can a rat. Any note you can reach, I can go higher. I can sing anything higher than you. No, you can't. Yes, I can. No, you can't. Yes, I can. No, you can't. Yes, I can. No, you can't. Yes, I can.

No, you can't. There were a lot of documents going back to his immigration as a child to New York. His father's kind of sad story as a cantor in Russia, fleeing the oppression there with his family, coming here unable to find work, becoming a butcher. You know, the very, very difficult lives of immigrants, Jewish, Italian, Irish, Polish, who were trying to make their way in the United States. But it was a tough struggle.

It was not a pretty picture. And there were no obvious paths to success. The one that Berlin started to take was as a street musician, and he lived on the street. So he really came from a very, very, as they would now say, disadvantaged background. So how did he manage to overcome it? A lot of it was his incredible work ethic. He was absolutely indomitable.

He was also honest. I did not hear stories about Irving Berlin cheating people or gambling or being a womanizer or drug addict or all the other things that seemed to go along with some of this mythology. He was in some ways kind of a solitary genius, although after a while he became associated with many, many celebrities because of what he did. And the most intriguing part to me was how did he write his music if he was not a trained musician? And he didn't go to any music school in Russia.

He didn't go to anything like that here. Not only that, he played his pieces on a specially prepared piano. People thought it was unique to Irving Berlin, but it wasn't. And he played only the black keys. So part of it was because if you put his fingers on the keyboard, you know, they stuck up, they were right there. Not only that, not only that, but to change keys.

He wasn't able to do that in that very difficult to learn, especially for somebody like me, fingering way. It was a transposing piano. It was an invention that many self-taught or uneducated Tin Pan Alley composers used. So there was a bar underneath it. You changed it and the piano changed key.

So that simplified things. There were some video demonstrations in the early 50s on TV where he showed how he did it. He wasn't the only one. People kept saying, he's the only one who had this specially unique prepared piano, but that's not true. There are a bunch of others because Berlin wasn't the only unchained songwriter trying to make his way. There were others. He was part of a group of, you know, these were immigrants from Eastern Europe. They were preceded by Irish immigrants, George M. Cohan and other songwriters who were more or less following the same path. They were also fighting intense oppression or discrimination and making their way. Berlin had both advantages and disadvantages. Eastern European Jews from his background were considered sort of beyond the pale.

And so that made it difficult. On the other hand, he really had his finger on the pulse of the city and through some genius or intuition, the American psyche. Now, how he did that, I don't really know, but keep in mind, he wrote God Bless America. Through the night with the light from above, from the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam, God bless America, my home sweet home. And many other songs that, Easter parade, white Christmas.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. How did he do this? This is magic. And I think part of it was genius and part of it was strategy. He was aware as a composer that songs geared to holidays were very popular. They were occasional. And you've been listening to Laurence Burgreen tell the story of Irving Berlin and how he came to America. Well, to escape religious persecution, Jews had been suffering in Russia, pogroms they were called at the time. And then, well, life wasn't easy for his father here. The opportunities didn't present themselves readily or easily. But to the son to Irving, well, he started on the streets as a self-taught street musician.

And from there, his talent and more importantly, his work ethos, his work ethic would prevail. When we come back, more of the remarkable story, the absolutely American story of Irving Berlin here on Our American Story. This Mother's Day, wrap her in love with Miki Couture. Give mom the softest hug ever with one of our luxurious cozy blankets. The perfect way to say you are cherished, you are loved. From movie nights to quiet moments just for her, Miki Couture makes every day feel extra special. Shop now at mikikouture.com or stop by one of our stores to find the perfect blanket for the perfect mom. Miki Couture, wrap her in love this Mother's Day. And we continue with Our American Stories and the life of Irving Berlin as told by best-selling author Lawrence Burgreen, who wrote the definitive biography as thousands cheer the life of Irving Berlin.

Let's pick up where we last left off. Of course, White Christmas, which he wrote in about 1942 on this piano has become the best-selling song, the most popular song of all time. It was originally popularized by Bing Crosby, but then countless times there was a movie White Christmas and the way it took off was phenomenal.

And most people think it's a folk tune. That in a way is a compliment because Berlin knew how to make songs sound as if they were already there. They weren't complicated.

They weren't tricky. He seemed to find a tune or inspiration that was just there and write it down. Oh, actually he didn't write it down because he could not write music. He had a musical secretary to it who I got to know named Helmy Kressa. And I spent a lot of time talking with Helmy about what was it like to write with Irving Berlin.

So Berlin would tap it out on his prepared piano, sometimes sing it and his voice, which you can hear in some songs and some movies, especially This is the Army. I've been a soldier quite a while and I would like to state the life is simply wonderful. The army food is great. I sleep with 97 others in a wooden hut. I love them all.

They all love me. It's very lovely, but oh, how I hate to get up in the morning. Oh, how I'd love to remain in bed for the hardest blow of all is to hear the bugler call. You've got to get up. You've got to get up. You've got to get up this morning. Someday I'm going to murder the bugler. Someday they're going to find him dead.

I'll amputate his revelry and step upon it heavily and spend the rest of my life in bed. Oh, how I hate to get up in the morning. Let's put it this way. It didn't have much of a range. It had a great deal of spirit, but he was not a sophisticated singer with a big booming operatic voice, quite the opposite.

So it's just incredible in the face of all these disadvantages. How did he manage to do this 1500 times? However, many songs are attributed to him.

It's really, really extraordinary. So I mean, Helmy told me the story. Berlin was an insomniac. So he would often call up Helmy in the middle of the night and say, Helmy, Helmy. He's always very excited to write this down, write this down. And then he would start singing a song or plunking it out on his prepared piano. And then Helmy, who was his musical secretary, would write it down and play it back for him. They went back over and over and over for hours on end, night after night to get a song right. It wasn't just in a one time.

Oh, here's a song. Write it down. Got it.

Good. No, it wasn't like that. They were incredibly painstaking in refining it. And he would have Helmy repeat it. Does it sound better this way? Does it sound better that way? A slight change in the rhythm, a slight change in something else about it until he was satisfied with it. When that stage was done, it was given to somebody else to orchestrate because often these songs were played for movies or on Broadway shows, you know, with an orchestra or a quartet or something else.

So it was a multi-step process. Also, what was remarkable was unlike most songwriters, although there are exceptions, he wrote the words and the music. There are a few others who did that, Cole Porter and some others, but Berlin, it was almost always words and music by Irving Berlin. This was also remarkable because keep in mind that English was his second language. Now, of course, he had a very acute ear for language and his choice of words and syllables was just perfect.

The intervals and it always sounds so natural unless he wants to be tricky or play games or something, but it sounds so natural. He became thought of or considered a quintessentially, despite all his varied roots, as the quintessentially American songwriter, beginning with his first hit, 1911, Alexander's Ragtime Band. And again, people thought this was a folk tune, but Irving Berlin wrote it. He was drawing on an American tradition of an Alexander song as a genre, mainly among African-American musicians.

And he thought that would just make for a peppy tune and this one caught on. And we now think of it as a highly representative song from that era. Most people heard these songs through live music and recorded music was slow and coming.

Eventually it would spread, of course, on the radio and television and movies. But at this point, it was basically live music in restaurants and in shows and things like that. So the performers were very important and their ability to send a song, to make that note carry all the way to the back of the auditorium or the bar or whatever above a noisy crowd was really important. The best example of that was Ethel Merman, who I had actually seen perform.

She was in some of his later shows. She could practically shatter glass, practically, with her voice. It was so powerful. So Berlin wanted to hear his lyrics. So he would often stand in the back of a theater to see if the voice would carry.

And if somebody had a beautiful voice, but it was kind of soft, that didn't work. He also did a lot of reviews as well, which he enjoyed doing. And he was extremely enterprising. He set up his own music publishing company, Irving Berlin Music, which gave him a great deal of control. And eventually, he built with some partners and owned the Music Box Theater on Broadway.

This is now what would be called vertical integration. I've been in shows at the Music Box Theater and it's still there. It's a beautiful theater. Eventually, he became one of the founders of ASCAP to protect music. I mean, it was a very important thing that he did because there had been no way to collect royalties at that point, especially as a recording industry.

Now, it's more important than ever because there's so many different ways of doing it. So he really was a pioneer in so many ways. Of course, it's the songs that have seeped into our collective consciousness that are so wonderful.

And you wonder, oh yes, where did that come from? Give Our Guards a Goin' Way, Irving Berlin, so many others. Not all of them are equally famous, but many, many of them are household words that people say, oh, I didn't realize Irving Berlin wrote that song. And you've been listening to best-selling author Lawrence Burgreen share the story of Irving Berlin, his biography as thousands cheer the life of Irving Berlin.

Well, you can get it at Amazon or The Usual Suspects. And we learned that Berlin's talent was that he knew how to make songs that sounded like they were already there. And then on the business side, owning his own publishing, forming ASCAP, which would create royalty collections. The business side of the business was a part of his genius too.

When we come back, more of the story of Irving Berlin here on Our American Stories. Ever notice your dog slowing down and having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add Rough Greens to your dog's food for 90 days, and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings naturopathic Dr. Dennis Black, inventor of Rough Greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the Rough Greens 90 Day Challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet.

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Just add a scoop of Rough Greens. And we continue with the story of Irving Berlin and telling that story as best-selling author Lawrence Burgreen. Let's pick up where we last left off. He just had an incredible catalog. He also, despite the fact that he was a generally withdrawn person and at times kind of cranky, was a wonderful collaborator. And when he made friends with somebody, whether it was Alexander Wilcott, the critic, or Cole Porter, or many other singers and performers, he stayed friends and he was a great musical partner. And he just had this phenomenal drive to keep working.

You know, nothing stopped him. During the war, he wrote a show, a review that was meant as a morale booster called This is the Army. And he had been in the army in World War I. And he had written one famous song and he got out of it, Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning, because he was an insomniac and he really did hate to get up in the morning.

I mean, really. Anyway, this was now one more later in World War II. He revived that song and wrote a bunch of others and not only decided to have a really patriotic motivation and use this show to raise money to donate to the war effort, but to travel with it. So he put on a uniform and he traveled with them around the world performing. It was dangerous. This was, you know, they were on a warship.

They were not going on a luxury cruise. And by coincidence, the members of the crew of This is the Army bonded a lot because it had been an incredible experience for this patriotic cause. Every five years, they got together here in New York for a reunion.

By coincidence, they were having a reunion when I was writing the book. So I made a beeline for the hotel where they were and recorded or wrote down their reminiscences of what it was like to travel around the world with Irving Berlin and raising funds to support the war effort. So why did Berlin do it?

He loved having an audience. It was partly that. Also, he did really feel a sense of patriotism about this country, which it was just a sense of gratitude that he was here and that he was safe, that he wasn't in a country that was overrun with pogroms, basically race riots against Jews or others, and that there was some sort of education. There was some sort of expectation that one could get along, make money, rise above one station, if one worked hard. And of course, if you were in Russia, I guess he came from a little town called Mogilev. It was not that way. It was a very, very grim existence and very hard to advance. It sounds naive, but this really was a land of opportunity compared to other places, especially compared to Eastern Europe or to Ireland, which is why so many immigrants came to New York.

This is a well-known story, but it's worth reminding people. You know, it's just a shame that 15 years later, by the time he got to the show, Mr. President, which was an expression of his patriotism and optimism and all that, and which failed on Broadway. By then, it was apparent that there had been a tectonic shift in the national sentiment. And suddenly, after he had been on the cutting edge, the culture was passing him by. What seemed like tried and true reliable sentiments were no longer the order of the day, and he didn't take it well. On the other hand, by then, he was hugely wealthy, very successful, and didn't actually need to keep grinding out more and more songs.

But it's a shame that he dropped from public view. And as I mentioned, I thought almost of when I wrote this book, the subtitle would be, Whatever Happened to Irving Berlin? But as I think two things, he changed, and also our culture changed. You know, there are other songwriters from that era, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and countless others, who underwent the same kind of difficulties and transformation as Berlin.

But he was a particular extreme example. And because he was a pioneer, it was, you know, as Alexander Wolcott said, Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music. And by that, he meant that he kind of defined the boundaries, the spirit, the holidays, the sentiments that seem so American.

There's no more American song than White Christmas, except perhaps God Bless America, all of which Berlin donated all the royalties from that monster hit. But he was motivated by a sense of gratitude. And, you know, he didn't make a big deal out of self-promoting to do that.

But that was his sense. So, you know, yes, he was son of a cantor and Jewish. But I thought as I wrote this book, what was his belief system really like? You know, his second wife, Ellen Mackey, was Catholic, that it was, if anything, patriotism, you know, the sort of highest ideals.

I know that sounds corny and simplistic. However, I think that's the way he was. And others were like that.

It was not that unusual for immigrants from Europe who felt that sense of gratitude because if they had stayed back in Eastern Europe or somewhere else, you know, they would have been crushed. So you hear all that in Berlin's music. There's something about Irving Berlin, which just gets everybody. They think, oh yeah, who's he?

And then once they get going, you know, he wrote that, he wrote that, he wrote that. And the stories about him are so unlikely you can't believe a person like this existed. Except he did. There was a naivete.

It now seems naive because we're all so jaded now that, you know, it was really kind of inspiring. Eventually, of course, he went on to Hollywood. So he was not really a creature of Hollywood in the same way as he was of Broadway and reviews here. But, you know, he wrote some very important, successful musicals as well. And he collaborated with Bing Crosby and so many others. Oddly enough, he wrote White Christmas when he was in LA.

He was there. He was warm and sunny and he was longing for the snow. Well, if there's enough snow for enough weeks, you don't get off for it anymore. But if you are somewhere warm and it's the same every day, because I know that feeling, having spent a lot of time in LA, you begin to have a longing for it. The sun is shining.

The grass is green. The orange and palm trees sway. There's never been such a day in Beverly Hills, LA. But it's December the 24th. And I'm longing to be up north.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. It's just so clever the way he capitalized on this longing for home. And then during World War II, soldiers began to pick up on it. It was the sense of longing for nostalgia for home.

These are just basic universal things. They were not economic. They were not political. It was just a feeling of wanting to be home of shared experiences. See, I wrote White Christmas not with any idea that it was going to be a so-called songhead. I wrote it for a picture called Holiday Inn. But it came out at a time when most of our troops were in areas that had no White Christmas, in the jungles of the Pacific and the deserts of North Africa. That gave it a special significance where the boys were concerned. Then two civilians and soldiers, they read something into that song.

Frankly, I can't take a bow for that. They saw into the song or rather read into its family a lot of other things that they were terribly homesick for. I think White Christmas, that had been published another time, might have been a so-called success, but I'm certain it would never have had that emotional feel. That was Irving Berlin at his best. The fact that he had such limited resources, you know, in terms of musical experience, was just incredible. You know, he didn't go to Juilliard. He didn't study opera.

He was not trained. But then when we got to the last section of his life in the home stretch, the last 20 years, it was dispiriting because he repelled people. He pushed them away.

He didn't want to see them, even some family members. He was suffering from some mental affliction of old age and he tried to get treatment for it, but it didn't make that much difference. So it was, you know, very ironic that the person who had created so much spirit and joy and sense of unity in this country had withdrawn from it. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to author Lawrence Burgreen. His book, As Thousands Cheer, The Life of Irving Berlin is available at Amazon or wherever you get your books. He's also contributed The Life of Al Capone to Our American Stories and Christopher Columbus.

Both of those books too are available at Amazon. And what a life story. That ending just was, it was just a twist of irony that this man who meant so much to the public didn't interact with the public and not even his own family for decades. But what a contribution to American culture and American life. He was Jewish and he wrote White Christmas. He was Russian and he wrote God Bless America.

Only in America would that be possible, folks. And this was the land he loved. It was his home sweet home. 1,500 songs he gave birth to, including ones we still hum and are close to our hearts. The Life of Irving Berlin here on Our American Stories.