Word: puttin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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's musical dexterity was both obvious and ingratiating. He heard Gershwin play with syncopation in "Fascinatin' Rhythm," then executed his own elaborate, fairly daring ricochet rhythms in "Puttin' on the Ritz," "Monkey Doodle Doo" and "Everybody Step." Profligate with melody, he tossed extra bridges into "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly" and his longest (64-bar), finest construction, "Cheek to Cheek." The strange chord shift in bridge to "You're Laughing at Me" has endeared the song to jazzmen...
...sensibilities matured over the decades, Berlin adjusted some songs to avoid offense. The 1927 "Shakin' the Blues Away" begins: "Every darkie believes that trouble won't stay if you shake it away." Later it was changed to "Everybody believes..." "Puttin' on the Ritz" was originally about Manhattan whites going uptown: "Why don't you go where Harlem sits/ Puttin' on the Ritz/ Spangled gowns upon a bevy/ Of high browns from down the levee/ All misfits/ Puttin' on the Ritz." By the time Fred Astaire sang the tune in 1946, it had become another of Berlin's twittin'-the-rich...
...Puttin? on the Ritz," 1930. This instant standard, with one of Berlin's most intricately syncopated choruses, is associated with Fred Astaire, who danced to it in the 1946 "Blue Skies." But Astaire was the third star to sing it on film. First was Harry Richman, who had a #1 hit when he premiered the song in a 1930 film of the same name. Dear Mr. Gable "sang" it in "Idiot?s Delight," in 1939; then Astaire made it his own. For Mel Brooks fans, the definitive rendition is by Peter Boyle, as the top-hatted monster...
...sung everywhere by cowboys and members of Congress, is prime Berlin: emotionally direct, sinfully singable. The all-American immigrant, who died in 1989 at 101, wrote a million of 'em--well, 1,200, all collected in this handsome volume, indispensable for anyone who can't stop humming White Christmas, Puttin' on the Ritz, Always or the ineffable Cheek to Cheek. "Heaven, I'm in heaven...