What’s Berlin’s Best?

Calendar asked a cross-section of top singers and songwriters to pick their favorite Irving Berlin song and explain the longevity of his work.

Deceptively simple .

That phrase pops up again and again in conversations with top singers and songwriters on the subject of Irving Berlin’s music.

“The music isn’t as simple as you think it is,” said composer Marvin Hamlisch. “It deceives you. You think it’s maybe not as sophisticated as Cole Porter, certainly not as jazzy as Harold Arlen, maybe not as worldly as Richard Rodgers.

“But at the root of all his melodies, there’s a real beauty that you may not recognize the first time through. If you take ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business,’ and do it slowly, you find that you have a very poignant melody. It’s a melody that gets to your heart, and that’s the hardest thing to write.”

Burt Bacharach said he learned that the hard way.

“When I first started to write songs, (Berlin’s songs) looked to me like very simple, very easy songs to write,” he said. “I thought I could do a couple of those a day, but I went a year without getting a song published, so it wasn’t so easy.”

Michael Feinstein, a cabaret-style singer who frequently spoke with Berlin when Feinstein was working for the late lyricist Ira Gershwin, cited the example of Berlin’s 1925 ballad, “Always.”

“On a superficial level--just on a flip examination--you say, ‘that’s a nice song,’ but when you really get into it, you see how cleverly and carefully constructed it is. I remember hearing that it took him a whole year to come up with the final line--’not for just an hour/not for just a day/not for just a year/but always.’ That last line is the perfect finish for that song.”

Barry Manilow made a similar discovery when he studied Berlin’s “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.”

“I always considered that a pretty simple song,” he said. “But we took it apart recently, and it was amazing. There’s a point where the melody changes course and you don’t expect it to. And I’ve found that there’s a little unexpected turn in each of his songs where you can’t predict where it’s going to go. And yet when it gets there, it seems like it was the most obvious place to go.”

Manilow added: “Berlin always got to the truth. As a songwriter, I would probably be knocking my head against a wall trying to figure out the best way to say, ‘I’ll be loving you forever.’ And so what he did was just say, ‘I’ll be loving you always.’ ”

Indeed, that directness and simplicity is the most distinguishing characteristic of Berlin’s music.

Steve Lawrence, who starred with his wife, Eydie Gorme, in an Emmy-winning TV special built around Berlin’s music, said: “It’s very straight to the point, straight to the heart, straight to the mind, straight to the ear.”

Bob Hope, who has known Berlin for 50 years, observed that whereas Cole Porter’s songs were targeted at a sophisticated, elite audience, Berlin’s songs appeal to the average person. “They’re songs that everybody can sing and understand,” he said.

Henry Mancini, who assembles a group of top singers and songwriters each year to videotape a birthday greeting to Berlin, also contrasted the two composers. “Porter led with his mind and his intellect,” he said, “where Berlin leads more with his heart and soul.”

Rosemary Clooney, who got to know Berlin in the ‘50s when she co-starred in the film version of “White Christmas,” added: “He really had a handle on all the things that people find important in their lives. He crosses over all socioeconomic barriers and just gets to the feelings that all people share.”

Tony Bennett, who recently recorded an LP of Berlin songs called “Bennett/Berlin,” noted that Berlin was sometimes ridiculed by musical “experts” because he couldn’t read or write music.

“A lot of snobbish, very competent, mathematical musicians said, ‘This is a joke: The man can’t read music.’ And yet he wrote more hit songs than anybody. He knew what the common man was about--what his dreams were and how he felt about life. He was almost like the Norman Rockwell of songwriters.”

Manilow suggested that Berlin’s lack of formal musical training actually worked in his favor.

“Because he never learned to read music and couldn’t really play piano very well, he was stuck with his ear, which is the best way,” Manilow said.

Toni Tennille agreed. “When he sat down to write something, he didn’t say, ‘Now is this musically correct? Is it OK for this chord to follow this chord? Am I doing the right thing according to music theory?’ He just sat down and wrote without worrying if it was correct or not. And consequently it was more human. Berlin just wrote what came from his heart.”

Irving Berlin fans form something of a Who’s Who of American popular music.

Frank Sinatra--”Those of us who sing his songs are especially grateful to Irving, because we never have to play with his music, never have to hurry up the lyrics or slow them down to cover for him. The pure simplicity of his music gives us something that doesn’t need our protection. His music will carry us; all we have to do is give it our best shot.”

Gene Kelly--”Once you’ve heard a Berlin song, you can’t forget it. They get into your head and stay there. They all sound so simple and yet they’re haunting and lovely.”

Perry Como--”Irving Berlin always wrote great songs; in fact, I doubt if he ever wrote a bad one. It has always been a joy to record a Berlin song.”

Placido Domingo--”They are what we might call American folk songs which have found a lasting place in our hearts.”

Stephen Sondheim--”The lyrics are as artful in their seeming simplicity as the music is. . . . In any event, I’m a fan.”

Singers and songwriters point to several other factors to account for the enduring appeal of Berlin’s music.

Lyricist Carole Bayer Sager noted that Berlin’s songs have a timeless quality. “They don’t sound dated,” she said. “If I didn’t know them, I wouldn’t know when they were written. If you told me ‘White Christmas’ was written for a Johnny Mathis album in 1965, I’d believe it. But you couldn’t tell me that about certain other songs.”

Feinstein, who recently recorded an album of Berlin songs, added: “There’s nothing cliche or of-a-period about his songs. They’re not songs for the moment.”

Tennille, who performs songs by Berlin, Gershwin and Jerome Kern in her concerts, cited the singability of Berlin’s material. “His songs were very singable for the average voice. With most of Kern’s music, you have to have a pretty wide range in order to do justice to it. But just about anyone can sing ‘God Bless America’ and ‘White Christmas.’ I think it’s because Berlin had to sing it to the guy who wrote it down--and he didn’t have that terrific a voice--so if he could sing it, almost anybody could sing it.”

Lyricist Alan Bergman agreed. “They lay wonderfully for your voice, no matter who you are,” he said.

Bergman’s wife and co-lyricist Marilyn added: “There’s an inevitability about one line following another, one phrase following another. It just sounds like there’s no other way it could possibly go. He’s one of the best examples of the fact that lyrics are meant to be sung and not read. You look on paper at a line like, ‘They say that falling in love is wonderful/It’s wonderful, so they say’ and it looks like word salad. But you put it together with those notes, and it’s absolute magic.”

Berlin’s business acumen is also acknowledged by other musicians.

Jack Elliott, who was an orchestrator on Berlin’s last musical, 1962’s “Mr. President,” and is now conductor of the New American Orchestra, said: “He was a very smart, incredible merchandiser and had a feel for the market like no one has ever had.”

In his early years of on-the-street songwriting, he was one of the best song pluggers in the world. He was also the only one who ever owned outright every note of music he ever wrote. He had an incredible business head.”

But ultimately, it’s the sheer range of Berlin’s music that most impresses singers and songwriters. Many express amazement that the same man who wrote the ragtime/jazz anthem “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” also composed the silky ballad “Cheek to Cheek”; that the same man who wrote both the witty patter song “Anything You Can Do” also wrote the plaintive ballad, “What’ll I Do.”

In fact, Feinstein--who is something of a historian of pre-rock pop--noted that the remarkable range of Berlin’s songs led some to suspect that he didn’t really write them all.

“It just seemed impossible that an uneducated man (in composition) could create songs in so many different styles and of such complexity,” Feinstein said. He added that a rumor circulated in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s that Berlin had--in the vernacular of the day--a “colored boy” writing a lot of his material.

“In 1930 or ‘31,” Feinstein related, “Berlin hit a dry spell where for many months, he didn’t have a new song on the Hit Parade. And (composer) Harry Warren went to Berlin and said, ‘Irving, what happened to the colored boy?’

“Berlin knew about the rumor and laughed at it.”

“He looked at Harry and said, ‘He died.’ ”