Word: music
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Well, no. All three were products of a deceptively sophisticated professional who grew up with the country, reflecting America's experiences in his music. When the Baline family fled the Russian pogroms in 1892 for the tenements of New York, young Israel was four. The Statue of Liberty was only a couple of years older. His father Moses, a cantor, died when the boy was eight, so he hit the streets in search of work. Izzy sang for pennies anywhere he could find listeners, finally landing a job as a singing waiter in a raffish Chinatown bistro; it was there...
...Once you start singing," Berlin said in later years, "you start thinking of writing your own songs. It's as simple as that." Although he could not read or write music (he never did learn), he could pick out a melody on the piano in the key of F sharp. In 1909 Berlin, now calling himself Irving because it sounded tonier, landed a $25-a-week job with a Tin Pan Alley publisher. Two years later, he picked his way into American musical history with Alexander's Ragtime Band. More a march than a rag, it made Berlin famous, erroneously...
...short time, Berlin felt himself mined out. But an invitation from Moss Hart to collaborate on Face the Music in 1932 opened a rich new vein of melody. Depression America fought off the gathering gloom with the cheery bounce of Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee. For the first-act finale of As Thousands Cheer (1933), he dusted off an old clinker called Smile and Show Your Dimple, put a new bonnet on it and called it Easter Parade. Two years later, it was on to Hollywood, where Berlin wrote many of the tunes that sent % Fred Astaire...
...must be hell being Irving Berlin," a music publisher once lamented. "The poor guy's his own toughest competition." Few could match his output: more than 800 published songs and almost as many unpublished. Nor could they equal his business acumen. Fiercely protective of the copyrights to his songs, he helped establish the principle that every performance of a composer's work deserved a royalty. At the end, the boy from Cherry Street was worth millions...
...MUSIC...