[78-L] Berlin "White Christmas" article in today's Wall St. Journal

[David Lennick]

This goes into more detail. As noted, and as I've seen elsewhere, Crosby's 
premiere broadcast of the song (December 25/41) doesn't seem to exist except 
for a poor quality off-air recording.

http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/white_christmas.htm

dl

Royal Pemberton wrote:
> Here 'tis:
> 
> By ROY J. HARRIS
> JR.<http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=ROY+J.+HARRIS+JR.&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>
> 
> It was a peaceful song that became a wartime classic. Its unorthodox,
> melancholy melody—and mere 54 words, expressing the simple yearning for a
> return to happier times—sounded instantly familiar when sung by America's
> favorite crooner. But 67 years after its introduction, some still are
> surprised to learn that Bing Crosby's recording of the Irving Berlin ballad
> "White Christmas" became not only the runaway smash-hit for the World War II
> holidays, but the best-selling record of all time.
> 
> Such unrivaled success reflects everything from record-industry trends to
> the sweep of global history. But it all begins with the songwriting genius
> of a Russian immigrant, born Israel Baline, who had just turned 54 when
> Decca recorded the track on May 29, 1942, and already had to his credit
> hundreds of hits like "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "Blue Skies," "How Deep Is
> the Ocean?" and "God Bless America." (Berlin, 101 when he died in 1989,
> would have many more across a seven-decade career.)
> 
> Equally brilliant, though, was Berlin's insistence that "White Christmas" be
> introduced by the internationally popular Crosby. Perfectly suited to the
> casual, romantic style of the then-39-year-old, Berlin's lyric and tune
> blended the message, about longing for past Christmases, with suggestions of
> a love song, resonating with families being separated by war.
> 
> "'White Christmas' is an icon that transcends analysis for me. It has the
> simplicity that Berlin always tried to imbue his songs with," says Michael
> Feinstein, among the premier interpreters of the American Songbook. But
> Berlin's kind of simple is anything but to the ears of some music
> commentators.
> 
> "We know the song so well that we barely know it at all," Slate's Jody Rosen
> writes in his 2002 book "White Christmas: The Story of an American Song."
> Berlin biographer Philip Furia believes the songwriter's lack of formal
> musical training—he composed mostly on the black keys of F-sharp, often
> transposing songs with a specially modified piano—led to songs that "subtly
> depart from the most fundamental tenets of songwriting." While others might
> have stressed "dreaming" and "Christmas," for example, "Berlin deftly
> emphasizes the seemingly unimportant 'I'm' with a whole note, then races
> over the other syllables" before the next whole note, "white."
> 
> Rob Kapilow, playing as he is interviewed, notes how "White Christmas"
> eschews the usual "bridge": the countervailing melody normally following a
> song's first 16 measures. Berlin's opening bars "take you up the scale of
> yearning in their chords," and repeating them immediately heightens the
> impact. "Hear the minor chords for 'listen' and 'glisten'?" asks Mr.
> Kapilow, known for his "What Makes It Great?" lecture series. "It's
> heartbreaking."
> 
> Exactly where and when Berlin composed "White Christmas" is a mystery,
> because he offered varying accounts. He wrote in his New York and Beverly
> Hills homes and in hotels, often depositing songs in what he called "the
> trunk" for later use. "White Christmas" started as escapist Depression-era
> fare—a mournful satire for a Broadway review. The song's introductory verse,
> expunged by Berlin from some early sheet music, and infrequently performed
> today, places the singer in "Beverly Hills, L.A.," "longing to be up North."
> (The verse, Mr. Feinstein notes, "weakens the impact by forcing the listener
> to interpret things in a certain way.")
> 
> Berlin finally pulled "White Christmas" from the trunk for the movie
> "Holiday Inn," in which Crosby and Fred Astaire tell a story through a
> calendar full of songs. During production, though, the Japanese attacked
> Pearl Harbor. Crosby gave its first public performance—unheralded and
> unrecorded—on his Dec. 24, 1941, "Kraft Music Hall" radio program. The Decca
> 78 rpm wasn't released until just before the film's September premiere, as
> American recruits streamed overseas, many to snowless Pacific climes.
> 
> "Songs make history, and history makes songs," Berlin told an interviewer
> weeks before Decca's recording, suggesting that he expected good things for
> "White Christmas." (He once bragged that it was not only "the best song I
> ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote.") Still, he later
> conceded that the extent of its success shocked him. Irving Berlin Music
> Co., which collects royalties for his heirs, won't discuss totals. But a
> spokesman says he's "comfortable" saying that "Crosby's single is the
> best-selling record of all time." Guinness World Records puts its sales at
> more than 50 million copies, with album and other sales taking the total
> above 100 million.
> 
> Berlin had worried how "Holiday Inn" would showcase the song—reportedly
> hiding behind a set to observe Crosby singing it to co-star Marjorie
> Reynolds. He paid scant attention to orchestra leader John Scott Trotter's
> rendition with Crosby, backed by the Ken Darby Singers. In the 1940s,
> though, partly because of the war, radio broadcasting turned from live to
> recorded music. Disc jockeys, playing Crosby's "White Christmas" repeatedly,
> fueled demand for 78s to mail overseas.
> 
> Longing for Christmas snowfall was hardly a common image before Berlin's
> song. And Christmas carols, not secular songs, dominated the seasonal music
> scene. (After the success of "White Christmas," songwriters followed with
> similarly wistful hits, including "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and "Have
> Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.")
> 
> What had inspired Berlin? As a Jewish youth in Brooklyn, he experienced
> Christmas as an outsider, at neighbors' homes. Some biographers suggest that
> the death of his infant son, Irving Jr., from a heart ailment on Christmas
> Eve 1928 sharpened his sad holiday associations. But Berlin loved
> Christmastime, hating only how his film work often made for holidays away
> from his family back East. In 1937 a movie-industry friend surprised him
> with a short film designed to cheer him. Shot in advance, it pictured
> Berlin's family waving to him from a wintry home, as snow fell outside. Mr.
> Furia suspects that Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
> also might have influenced him, since the poem and song both use "the
> simplest of rhymes and barest of imagery to evoke a beautiful but melancholy
> scene." Jody Rosen writes that Berlin owes a debt to the poignant American
> "Home Songs" of Stephen Foster.
> 
> Whatever Berlin's inspiration, Mr. Kapilow figures that the power of
> repetition in the war years laid the groundwork for its later success. Carl
> Sandburg may have explained that early popularity best in an article marking
> Pearl Harbor's first anniversary: "We have learned to be a little sad and a
> little lonesome, without being sickly about it. This feeling is caught in
> the song of a thousand juke boxes and the tune whistled in streets and
> homes, 'I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas.' When we sing that song we don't
> hate anybody. . . . Away down under, this latest hit of Irving Berlin
> catches us where we love peace."
> —Mr. Harris is a journalist and author in Hingham, Mass.
> 
> On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 10:37 AM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:
> 
>> Can someone post the copy? This has crashed my system twice, both times
>> VERY
>> SLOWLY. Dunno why.
>>
>> dl
>>
>> Steve Ramm wrote:
>>>  http://tinyurl.com/ybqkfz7
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Steve Ramm
>>>