Irving Berlin Thesis
Rebecca McKenney
Mrs. Garnet
History and Sociology of Rock Music
7 September 2016
Irving Berlin Israel (later Irving) was born to Moses and Lena Berlin on May 11th, 1888. Together with his parents and five older siblings, Irving left his home of Mohilev, Russia for New York City in 1893. The Berlin family, like many immigrates, struggled to survive in America. In his book As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, author Laurence Bergreen mentions that at age fourteen (when a child was no longer legally required to attend school) that “along with many other ghetto children desperate to earn money, he (Irving) turned his back on both formal education and his family.” (Bergreen 14) But he never forgot the signing training he received from his dad. After a series of short-lived jobs, Irving’s first claim to fame in the music world was that of a waiter-singer in various bars (most notably The Pelham Café.) Although a talented lyricists, he stilled needed the help of a transcriber to write the music and learn how to write music. It wasn’t until 1908, while he worked at Jimmy Kelley’s (another bar), that he started to write both the lyrics and the …show more content…
While here, he would “set himself a goal of writing as many as four to five songs during his nightlong sessions, and he constantly assessed and judged his handiwork often harshly.” (Bergreen 43) With early collaborator Ted Snyder and George Whiting, Irving wrote “My Wife’s Gone to the Country (Hurrah-Hurrah!)” in 1909 which is credited with being Irving’s first hit. (In fact it was so popular that a new trade journal called Variety “placed a half-page advertisement” for the song. (Bergreen 44)) In Charles Hamm’s Irving Berlin: The Formative Years, Hamm mentions that as well as publishing music in his own right, Irving was known to “doctored” songs (meaning that he toke a song credited to someone else and changed it but “withdrew mention of his output.”.) (Hamm
Mrs. Garnet
History and Sociology of Rock Music
7 September 2016
Irving Berlin Israel (later Irving) was born to Moses and Lena Berlin on May 11th, 1888. Together with his parents and five older siblings, Irving left his home of Mohilev, Russia for New York City in 1893. The Berlin family, like many immigrates, struggled to survive in America. In his book As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, author Laurence Bergreen mentions that at age fourteen (when a child was no longer legally required to attend school) that “along with many other ghetto children desperate to earn money, he (Irving) turned his back on both formal education and his family.” (Bergreen 14) But he never forgot the signing training he received from his dad. After a series of short-lived jobs, Irving’s first claim to fame in the music world was that of a waiter-singer in various bars (most notably The Pelham Café.) Although a talented lyricists, he stilled needed the help of a transcriber to write the music and learn how to write music. It wasn’t until 1908, while he worked at Jimmy Kelley’s (another bar), that he started to write both the lyrics and the …show more content…
While here, he would “set himself a goal of writing as many as four to five songs during his nightlong sessions, and he constantly assessed and judged his handiwork often harshly.” (Bergreen 43) With early collaborator Ted Snyder and George Whiting, Irving wrote “My Wife’s Gone to the Country (Hurrah-Hurrah!)” in 1909 which is credited with being Irving’s first hit. (In fact it was so popular that a new trade journal called Variety “placed a half-page advertisement” for the song. (Bergreen 44)) In Charles Hamm’s Irving Berlin: The Formative Years, Hamm mentions that as well as publishing music in his own right, Irving was known to “doctored” songs (meaning that he toke a song credited to someone else and changed it but “withdrew mention of his output.”.) (Hamm