Irving Berlin sings Emma Lazarus
 

Thanks, Sam. I'd heard the song before--in grade school, sung by a choir of kids, as arranged by one of the sisters who taught us. I'm glad I now know who should have been credited with the melody (and maybe he was credited, though my fifth-grade mind didn't pay enough attention).

Thanks for posting, Sam.

Maryann, I also remember singing this in choir in (junior or senior?) high school. I liked it then. Now it sounds a little sentimental for my taste.

As for the composer’s voice—well, I think I prefer Bob Dylan’s...sorry...

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Thanks for this Sam. It's as if Jesus himself wrote the lyrics. Beatitudes, the song.

I think I see what you're getting at / why you posted... And think I see all the layers of it that makes it so compelling a lyric today in contrast to what we are seeing, given our turn towards being a less kind, less gentle nation (roll over George H. Bush).
When you stop -- really stop -- and think about it, our bedrock as a nation has been built on this dreamy, altruistic, idealistic notion that people are resilient and, given the right circumstances, can revive themselves and give back more than they took.
...Or maybe it was more a "beggars can't be choosers" mentality... We were a pretty motley crew ourselves and so we'll make good with whatever we can get.
...Or was it the first salvo thrown in our quest to conquer the world with capitalism. (Give me your human resources...) The second salvo was slavery.

To listen to Berlin's fledgling voice sing this is heart-breaking. Now there is a new lyric being written. It is being sung by a hellish choir that fears the tired, the hungry, the sick, those yearning to be free. That's how we all fall down.
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Not Irving Berlin's best composition, but I'm thrilled to have an excuse to rave about his special genius.

He had very little formal education. Immigrated to the US at age five (his earliest memory was of watching his house burn down in a pogrom in Russia). His father died when he was eight years old, at which point young Israel started selling newspapers to help support his large family. He would sing the songs he heard through the open doors of the saloons, hoping for a few extra pennies to supplement what he made from newspaper sales. He would change the words of popular songs to naughty lyrics, because the bar clientele loved that.

He had no musical training whatsoever. Never learned to read music beyond picking out a melody with one finger. Taught himself to play piano by ear, after the bars he was singing in closed for the night. For a long time, he played everything in the key of F sharp, so he could stay on the black keys. (Even later, he had three special pianos made for him, so that he could shift a lever and have the whole keyboard move to different strings, while he stayed on the black keys. Seriously. One of those pianos is in the Smithsonian Museum now.) Other musicians would transcribe and orchestrate his compositions for him.

Read his Wikipedia entry. Especially the bit about his attitude toward taxes:

Hi Julie,

Sorry to miss you in San Diego.
It's good to learn a little about Irving Berlin. The story goes that Keith Richards also has various guitars tuned for him to simplify the chords he has to play on them in concert.

Cheers,
John

Of course, there's plenty of painful irony in the way some of Irving Berlin's patriotic songs have been appropriated by anti-Semites and xenophobes and white supremacists.

* Anti-Semites' nickname for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom they claim was a secret Jew.

From a New York Times essay by James Kaplan, whose biography of Irving Berlin, New York Genius, will be released this fall.

Thanks for sharing this, Sam. The melody of this song is very nice and wonderfully adapted to the words. I had not heard the song before, I do not think, so I was glad to learn of it.

P.S. John, I doubt Keith Richards, whom Rolling Stone ranked fourth-best guitarist ever, needed to have ‘guitars tuned for him to simplify the chords he has to play on them in concert.’ He experimented with open tunings and the like but rather as an artistic choice than as a crutch. That is so far as I can tell.

Edited-in: Right, we agree then. Whereas Berlin played in the key of F sharp so he could stay on the black keys and had pianos specially made to accommodate an inability to play in other keys, Richards did not similarly play in some tuning or on any guitar made to accommodate an inability on his part to play certain chords or anything else. Rather, he wanted to experiment with different tunings and found certain modifications to his instrument convenient for it. Just wanted to make that distinction.

Hi Erik,

Yes, Keith Richards is a superb guitarist. I too doubt he needs to have guitars tuned for him in this way; but maybe he likes it or finds it convenient. Here, to bring more data to our discussion, is a link by someone who clearly knows more than I do about the topic: https://www.cleveland.com/music/2015..._weapon_k.html
Also, Julie, thank you for that continued information about Irving Berlin. Neo-Nazis, like Nazis, are contemptible, as that passage well illustrates. What a sad and narrow universe they inhabit!

Cheers,
John

An unfair comparison, since Dylan was not just a pretty good singer but a truly great singer who packed stadiums with people who loved to hear him sing, while Berlin never fancied himself a singer/performer.

If you have any doubts about Dylan's genius as a singer/performer, watch the new Scorsese film on the Rolling Thunder Revue. Feel free to fast-forward through the non-performance parts (which is a fake documentary) and just watch/listen to the performances.