Word: berlin
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...Like Foster, Berlin adapted some of his early hits from Negro music. And in his first flush of success, 90 years ago, he wrote so prolifically (averaging a new published song a week) that it was rumored "a little colored boy" was the real composer of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" and other syncopated hits. (Berlin's response, noted in Lawrence Bergreen's excellent biography "As Thousands Cheer": "Do you realize how many little nigger boys I'd have to have?") The simple fact is that he wrote fast. In 1946, when he accepted the job of doing the music...
...little colored boy" rumor was just one of many that arose from his rivals' envy or astonishment at the quantity, quality and range of Berlin's output. Another was that he picked out his songs with one finger. To disprove this one, Berlin arranged in 1926 to play for the Herald Tribune's Paul N. Stone, who reported: "It was a simple demonstration, but it did take in eight fingers and two thumbs...
...BERLIN MIRACLE...
...true that Berlin, an emigre from Czarist Russia, had no formal training in composition. He could not read music. He employed arrangers to transcribe the pulsing melodies and often complex harmonies that poured out of his head and through his clumsy fingers. He could play in only one key, banging out his numbers on a special piano (he called it "the Buick") that, with the push of a pedal, could transpose keys. Even on his own machine, Berlin was a lousy salesman of his music; his ragged vocal and instrumental technique could undermine his best work. In 1934, Fred Astaire...
...this any good?" It's a question Berlin kept bugging himself with. He was obsessed with writing hits, and if he was absent from the top of the charts for a year or so, he'd drive himself nuts wondering if his long run as America's troubadour was suddenly over. One dry spell came in 1930. He hadn't had a #1 song in three years; now he'd gone to Hollywood to write a musical for Douglas Fairbanks, "Reaching for the Moon," and after discouraging previews the studio had cut most of the songs. "I developed the damnedest...