Word: berlin
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...wasn't stuck long. Another 1930 movie tune, "Puttin' On the Ritz," went to #1, and within two years Berlin was hot on Broadway, with hit shows ("Face the Music" and "As Thousands Cheer") that birthed "Heat Wave," "Easter Parade" and that perk-me-up Depression cheer, "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee." Ethan Mordden's analysis of the song, in his book "Broadway Babies," gets to the heart of Berlin's staying power: "Part of being essential to pop culture is staying adaptable. In days of rag, the jazz age, and now in hard times, Berlin not only...
...Berlin never topped the work he did for Astaire on three 30s film musicals; neither did anyone else. The 13 Berlin songs Astaire sang and recorded from "Top Hat," "Follow the Fleet" and "Carefree" all landed in the pop charts' top 15. Three ("Cheek to Cheek," "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket," "Change Partners") got to #1. Two others ("Top Hat, White Tie and Tails," "Let Yourself Go") hit #2. "Isn't This a Lovely Day" reached #3. And all have lingered like a perfume that never goes stale. The range and artistry, the vigor and virtuosity...
...years ago, when TIME's editors were choosing "the" song of the 20th century, my suggestion was "Cheek to Cheek" - a dance-and-romance tune composed in an ambitious, 64-bar structure. Berlin pitched it smartly to Astaire's frail but persuasive tenor voice; for example, in the phrase "And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak," the melody zigzags up to a note Astaire can hardly sing. The song's daring swings of rhythm and emotion consecutively express three moods of a lover in pursuit - bliss ("Heaven, I'm in heaven"), jauntiness ("Oh, I love to climb...
...CLUB Berlin's mix of sentiment and a brash, welcoming wit made him the favorite composer of the people - but maybe not of other top composers. I wonder if he was ever considered a member of their club, of whether he considered himself one. Oh, they were all chummy. Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were his producers on "Annie Get Your Gun"; he took over from Kern, who had died suddenly. (Twenty years earlier, Rodgers was not so pleased when, at the request of the star Belle Baker, Berlin had written a song for her to interpolate into an otherwise...
...Often he showed his collegiality the best way he knew, by writing in the style of other composers' work. As a bon-voyage gift to Cole Porter before a 1935 sailing, Berlin roguishly parodied Porter's recent hit "You're the Top: "You're the burning heat/ Of a bridal suite/ In use,/ You're the breasts of Venus/ You're King Kong's penis/ You're self-abuse!" In 1948, for a Bob Hope Christmas tour in support of the Berlin airlift, he adapted the Ralph Rainger-Leo Robin "Thanks for the Memory." The bridge went: "Thanks...