Irving berlin brief biography of benjamin moore

Irving Berlin fans will be pleased to see such items as the complete Jerome Kern letter (written in 1925!) in which Kern writes, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music. HE IS AMERICAN MUSIC.”

The Irving Berlin Reader. Edited by Benjamin Sears.

Irving berlin brief biography of benjamin moore

Oxford University Press, 219 pages, $35.

By Michael Ullman

“There is, of course, some kind of a tale behind every song,” wrote Irving Berlin in a letter to the editor of Variety in 1942, “but mostly songs are written because one is a songwriter.” “Writing songs,” he added, “is his business.” It’s a typically matter-of-fact statement from a man whose first rule of song writing was “keep it simple” and whose advice to other songwriters was to work, as he did, almost ceaselessly.

It may have been simple, but it wasn’t easy. Berlin, who was born Israel Baline in Russia on May 11, 1888, left his overcrowded, fatherless home on the Lower East Side when he was 14. Later he told his first biographer, Alexander Woolcott, that he w