Irving Berlin: Songs from the Melting Pot: The Formative Years, 1907-1914

According to the classic songwriter Jerome Ken, "Irving Berlin is American music." Some may differ about Berlin's absolute primacy, but without a doubt this child of New York's Lower East Side is responsible for an astonishing number of American war-horses, including "God Bless America," "Blue Skies," "Always," "White Christmas," and "Easter Parade". In this study of Berlin's earliest works, musicologist Charles Hamm redefines the composer's relationship to the melting-pot culture of the Lower East Side. As Hamm points out, Berlin began by writing for the vaudeville stage, which dictated an outpouring of cornball pieces in Italian, Irish, German, and African American dialect. This would suggest an impulse for assimilation. Yet he argues that Berlin, like a host of other Tin Pan Alley stalwarts, never truly surrendered to the melting pot. His own culture never disappeared in a broth of American homogeneity. Hamm's book is an intriguing lesson in artistic formation.