Search - Artist/Band: Irving Berlin

• Name: Irving Berlin
• Birthday: 05/11/1888
• Birth Place: Tyumen, Russia
• Died: 09/22/1989
• Decades Active: 1920,1930,1940,1950,1960
• Genre: Soundtrack
• Styles: American Popular Song, Cast Recordings, Show Tunes, Tin Pan Alley Pop, Traditional Pop, Film Music, Original Score, Soundtracks, Standards
• Moods: Dramatic, Smooth, Amiable/Good-Natured, Elegant, Poignant, Carefree, Refined/Mannered, Sophisticated

Title	Release
Irving Berlin	06/30/2009
One Night on Broadway	06/22/2007
Jazz Giants Play the Irving Berlin Songbook	10/17/2006
White Christmas [Original Studio Cast] WA	10/17/2006
Composers on Broadway: Irving Berlin	06/20/2006
Berlin for Brass WA	09/17/2002
The Songwriters Collection	06/18/2002
Musicality of Berlin	04/02/2002
All By Myself	2002
Alexander's Ragtime Band [Howards Int'l]	10/30/2001
Irving Sings Berlin WA	04/24/2001
Gold Collection	04/03/2001
Top Hat/Blue Skies	03/27/2001
Berlin Lieder WA	01/09/2001
Holiday Inn [Original Soundtrack] WA	10/17/2000
On the Avenue WA	07/18/2000
Come on and Hear	01/01/2000
On the Avenue/Four Jills in a Jeep	01/01/2000
The Songs of Irving Berlin [Empire]	07/13/1999
Irving Berlin in Hollywood	02/16/1999
Top Hat White Tie & Tails	02/16/1999
Melody Lingers On: 25 Songs (Recorded 1924-1946)	11/18/1997
Irving Berlin Songbook	06/03/1997
Great Melodies: Irving Berlin/Jerome Kern	12/17/1996
Keep on Smiling	09/17/1996
The Great Irving Berlin	12/12/1995
Always Songs of Irving Berlin	11/17/1994
Great American Songwriters	10/25/1994
Millenium Anthology	10/25/1994
World of Irving Berlin: Tell Me With a Melody	03/15/1993
Let's Go Back to the Waltz	03/03/1993
Puttin' on the Ritz: Capitol Sings Irving Berlin WA	08/17/1992
Irving Berlin 100th Anniversary Collection	10/25/1990
Alexander's Ragtime Band [Vintage Jazz Classic] WA	1990
Great American Composers: Irving Berlin	1989
Irving Berlin Always	1988
The Girl on the Magazine Cover WA	1988
Holiday Inn & White Christmas WA
Showcase
You Keep Coming Back Like a Song

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) was the most successful songwriter of the 20th century. Though, like his contemporaries, he spent the better part of his career writing songs (usually both words and music) to be used in Broadway musicals, he is better remembered for the songs themselves than for the shows (and sometimes films) in which they were introduced. This is because Berlin was a master at the kind of music that flourished from the turn of the century until World War II, shows that were really just collections of production numbers, scenes, and novelty acts (organized vaudeville presentations, really) rather than the story musicals that became prevalent starting with Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! in 1943. It is also because Berlin, who did not read music and could play the piano in only one key and only on the black notes (he used a special piano with a lever that changed keys for him and employed a musical secretary to notate his compositions), wrote songs, not scores.

But what songs! Out of more than a thousand, a short list would include "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (his first major hit, in 1911), "God Bless America," "A Pretty Girl Is like a Melody," "Always," "Blues Skies," "Puttin' on the Ritz," "How Deep Is the Ocean?," "Cheek to Cheek," "Let's Face the Music and Dance," "White Christmas," "There's No Business like Show Business," "I Love a Piano," "What'll I Do?" "Easter Parade," and "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning." The last came from one of the two shows Berlin organized and performed in during the two world wars (he can be seen in the film version of the second one, This Is the Army).

Berlin became his own song publisher and built and owned a Broadway theater, the Music Box, to house his shows. Perhaps his greatest and his last hit came with the musical Annie Get Your Gun in 1946, though he did write three more before retiring in 1962. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide