Editing Irving Berlin (section)

===Before 1920===
[[File:Alexander's Ragtime Band - Billy Murray.ogg|thumb|"Alexander's Ragtime Band", performed by [[Billy Murray (singer)|Billy Murray]], Edison Amberol cylinder, 1911]]

===="Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1911)====
{{quote box|title=Ragtime a Form of Insanity|align=right|width=25em|bgcolor = LightCyan|quote='Alexander's Ragtime Band' is a public menace....Hysteria is the form of insanity that an abnormal love for ragtime seems to produce. It is as much a mental disease as acute mania—it has the same symptoms. When there is nothing done to check this form it produces idiocy.|source= — Dr. Ludwig Gruener<br />German newspaper story<ref name=Leopold>Leopold, David. ''Irving Berlin's Show Business'', Harry Abrams (2005)</ref>{{rp|23}}}}

Berlin rose as a songwriter in [[Tin Pan Alley]] and on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]]. In 1911, [[Emma Carus]] introduced his first world-famous hit, "[[Alexander's Ragtime Band]]", followed by a performance from Berlin himself at the Friars' Frolic of 1911 with [[Clifford Hess]] as his accompanist.<ref name=":0" /> He became an instant celebrity, and the featured performer later that year at [[Oscar Hammerstein I|Oscar Hammerstein]]'s vaudeville house, where he introduced dozens of other songs. The ''New York Telegraph'' described how two hundred of his street friends came to see "their boy" onstage: "All the little writer could do was to finger the buttons on his coat while tears ran down his cheeks—in a vaudeville house!"<ref name=Hamm/>{{rp|ix}}

[[File:Irving Berlin - Ragtime.JPG|thumb|left|Berlin with film stars [[Alice Faye]], [[Tyrone Power]] and [[Don Ameche]] singing chorus from "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938)]]

[[Richard Corliss]], in a ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' profile of Berlin, described "Alexander's Ragtime Band" as a march, not a [[ragtime|rag]], "its savviest musicality comprised quotes from a [[bugle call]] and "[[Swanee River (song)|Swanee River]]". The tune revived the [[ragtime]] fervor that [[Scott Joplin]] had begun a decade earlier, and made Berlin a songwriting star.<ref name=Corliss/> From its first and subsequent releases, the song was near the top of the charts as others sang it: [[Bessie Smith]], in 1927, and [[Louis Armstrong]], in 1937; No. 1 by [[Bing Crosby]] and Connee Boswell; [[Johnny Mercer]] in 1945; [[Al Jolson]], in 1947 and [[Nellie Lutcher]] in 1948. Add [[Ray Charles]]'s [[big-band]] version in 1959, and "Alexander" had a dozen hit versions in just under a half century.<ref name=Corliss>Corliss, Richard (December 24, 2001). [https://web.archive.org/web/20020208003254/http://www.time.com/time/sampler/article/0,8599,189846,00.html "That Old Christmas Feeling: Irving America: Richard Corliss remembers Irving Berlin"] ''Time''.</ref>

Initially the song was not recognized as a hit, however; Broadway producer [[Jesse Lasky]] was uncertain about using it, although he did include it in his "Follies" show. It was performed as an instrumental but did not impress audiences, and was soon dropped from the show's score. Berlin regarded it as a failure. He then wrote lyrics to the score, played it again in another Broadway review, and this time ''Variety'' news weekly called it "the musical sensation of the decade".<ref name=Bergreen/>{{rp|68}} Composer [[George Gershwin]], foreseeing its influence, said it was "the first real American musical work", adding, "Berlin had shown us the way; it was now easier to attain our ideal."<ref name=Gershwin/>{{rp|117}}

====Sparking a national dance craze====
[[File:Irving Berlin in New York City, circa 1911.jpg|thumb|upright|Enjoying early success in New York, c. 1911]]
Berlin was "flabbergasted" by the sudden international popularity of the song, and wondered why it became a sudden hit. He decided it was partly because the lyrics, "silly though it was, was fundamentally right ... [and] the melody ... started the heels and shoulders of all America and a good section of Europe to rocking."<ref name=Bergreen/>{{rp|69}} In 1913, Berlin was featured in the London revue Hello Ragtime, where he introduced "[[That International Rag]]", a song he had written for the occasion.<ref name=":0" />

;''Watch Your Step''
Furia writes that the international success of "Alexander's Ragtime Band"  gave [[ragtime]] "new life and sparked a national dance craze". Two dancers who expressed that craze were [[Vernon and Irene Castle]]. In 1914, Berlin wrote a ragtime revue, ''[[Watch Your Step (musical)|Watch Your Step]]'', which starred the couple and showcased their talents on stage. That musical revue became Berlin's first complete score with songs that "radiated musical and lyrical sophistication". Berlin's songs signified [[modernism]], and they signified the cultural struggle between [[Victorian era|Victorian]] gentility and the "purveyors of liberation, indulgence, and leisure", says Furia. The song "[[Play a Simple Melody]]" became the first of his famous "double" songs in which two different melodies and lyrics are [[counterpoint]]ed against one another.<ref name=Furia-Poets/><ref>audio: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaGkvhxcOWI "Play A Simple Melody", with Bing and Gary Crosby]</ref>

''Variety'' called ''Watch Your Step'' the "first syncopated musical", where the "sets and the girls were gorgeous". Berlin was then 26, and the success of the show was riding on his name alone. ''Variety'' said the show was a "terrific hit" from its opening night. It compared Berlin's newfound status as a composer with that of the Times building: "That youthful marvel of syncopated melody is proving things in ''Watch Your Step'', firstly that he is not alone a rag composer, and that he is one of the greatest lyric writers America has ever produced."<ref name=Whitcomb/>{{rp|173}}

Whitcomb also points out the irony that Russia, the country Berlin's family was forced to leave, flung itself into "the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania". For example, Prince [[Felix Yusupov]], a recent Oxford undergraduate of Russian noble lineage and heir to the largest estate in Russia, was described by his dance partner as "wriggling around the ballroom like a demented worm, screaming for 'more ragtime and more champagne{{' "}}.<ref name=Whitcomb/>{{rp|183}}

====Simple and romantic ballads====
{{quote box|align=right|width=25em|bgcolor = MistyRose|quote=My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American, not the highbrow nor the lowbrow but that vast intermediate crew which is the real soul of the country. The highbrow is likely to be superficial, overtrained, supersensitive. The lowbrow is warped, subnormal. My public is the real people.|source= — Irving Berlin<ref name=NYT-obit/>{{rp|11}}}}

[[File:Berlin-Jolson27.JPG|thumb|upright|left|With [[Al Jolson]] (r), star of ''[[The Jazz Singer]]'', c. 1927]]
Some of the songs Berlin created came out of his own sadness. For instance, in 1912 he married [[Dorothy Goetz]], the sister of songwriter [[E. Ray Goetz]]. She died six months later of [[typhoid fever]] contracted during their honeymoon in [[Havana]]. The song he wrote to express his grief, "When I Lost You", was his first ballad. It was an immediate popular hit and sold more than a million copies.<ref name=NYT-obit/>

He began to realize that ragtime was not a good musical style for serious romantic expression, and over the next few years adapted his style by writing more love songs.<ref name=Furia-Poets/> In 1915 he wrote the hit "I Love a Piano", a comical and erotic ragtime love song.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Love-A-Piano-lyrics-Irving-Berlin/61706587FB23D96F48256970000E8508 |title=I Love A Piano Lyrics – Irving Berlin |publisher=Sing365.com |access-date=January 19, 2013 |archive-date=June 28, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130628010755/http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Love-A-Piano-lyrics-Irving-Berlin/61706587FB23D96F48256970000E8508 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

By 1918 he had written hundreds of songs, mostly topical, which enjoyed brief popularity. Many of the songs were for the new dances then appearing, such as the [[Grizzly Bear (dance)|grizzly bear]], [[Chicken walks|chicken walk]], or [[foxtrot]]. After a Hawaiian dance craze began, he wrote "That Hula-Hula", and then did a string of Southern songs, such as "When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam". During this period, he was creating a few new songs every week, including songs aimed at the various immigrant cultures arriving from Europe. On one occasion, Berlin, whose face was still not known, was on a train trip and decided to entertain the fellow passengers with some music. They asked him how he knew so many hit songs, and Berlin modestly replied, "I wrote them."<ref name=Furia-Poets/>{{rp|53}}

An important song that Berlin wrote during his transition from writing ragtime to lyrical ballads was "[[A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody]]", which became one of Berlin's "first big guns", says historian [[Alec Wilder]]. The song was written for [[Ziegfeld]]'s ''Follies of 1919'' and became the musical's lead song. Its popularity was so great that it later became the theme for all of Ziegfeld's revues, and the theme song in the 1936 film ''[[The Great Ziegfeld]]''.<ref>video: [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ick8_a-pretty-girl-is-like-a-melody-the_shortfilms "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody"]</ref>  Wilder puts it on the same level as [[Jerome Kern]]'s "pure melodies", and in comparison with Berlin's earlier music, says it is "extraordinary that such a development in style and sophistication should have taken place in a single year".<ref name=Furia-Poets/>{{rp|53}}

====World War I====
On April 1, 1917, after President [[Woodrow Wilson]] declared that America would enter [[World War I]], Berlin felt that [[Tin Pan Alley]] should do its duty and support the war with inspirational songs. Berlin wrote the song "For Your Country and My Country", stating that "we must speak with the sword not the pen to show our appreciation to America for opening up her heart and welcoming every immigrant group." He also co-wrote a song aimed at ending ethnic conflict, "Let's All Be Americans Now".<ref name=Whitcomb/>{{rp|197}}

=====''Yip Yip Yaphank''=====
{{quote box|align=right|width=25em|bgcolor = Cornsilk|quote=At the grand finale... Sergeant Berlin led the entire 300-person cast off the stage, marching them down the theater's aisles, singing 'We're on Our Way to France,' all to tumultuous applause. The cast carried off their little producer like he was victor ludorum ... Tin Pan Alley had joined hands with real life|source= — biographer [[Ian Whitcomb]].<ref name=Whitcomb/>{{rp|199}}<ref>video:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34m5SPPZXQc Irving Berlin's "We're on our way to France"], from ''This is the Army'' (1943)</ref>}}

In 1917, Berlin was drafted into the [[United States Army]], and his induction became headline news, with one paper headline reading, "Army Takes Berlin!" But the Army wanted Berlin, now aged 30, to do what he knew best: write songs. While stationed with the [[152nd Depot Brigade]] at [[Camp Upton]], he then composed an all-soldier musical revue titled ''[[Yip Yip Yaphank]]'', written as a patriotic tribute to the [[United States Army]]. The show was taken to Broadway where it also included a number of hits, including "[[Mandy (Irving Berlin song)|Mandy]]" and "[[Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning]]", which Berlin performed himself.<ref name="NYT-obit" />

The shows earned $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, he would introduce 20 years later: "God Bless America".<ref name=Corliss/><ref name=Smith/>