The Persistence of "a Simple Melody": Acceptance of Irving Berlin's Music in the 1920s

Authors

Alina Vanderwood, Brigham Young University

Keywords

Irving Berlin, American Music, Jazz

Abstract

"Nobody appreciates more than I do how bad some of my lyrics are in the matter of technical details," said the 32-year-old composer Irving Berlin in 1920 during an interview with American Magazine. "Some of the biggest hits I've written were songs I was so ashamed of that I pleaded with the heads of music houses not co publish them." Yet in all of its imperfection, his music became so popular and influential that American composer Jerome Kern famously wrote, "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." Just nine years prior to this 1920 interview, Berlin wrote "Alexander's Ragtime Band," his first worldwide hit that launched him toward fame. Ten years before that, at age 13, he left home to relieve his family of some of their financial burden and began living independently in a lodging house in the Lower East Side of New York, working daily to sell newspapers and sing on street corners for anyone who passed by. Years later he became the first and only composer to build a theater for his own shows because they were so widely accepted as some of the greatest musical productions in America. The story of lrving Berlin's success portrays how he overcame tremendous social and economic obstacles, but beyond that, examining the acceptance of his music amid one of the most complex and defining eras of American pop culture reveals the public's desire to hear new music that encapsulated simple, everyday life.

Recommended Citation

Vanderwood, Alina (2021) "The Persistence of "a Simple Melody": Acceptance of Irving Berlin's Music in the 1920s," The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 50: Iss. 1, Article 13.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol50/iss1/13