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 Irving Berlin on Swing In an interview with Leonard G. Feather Alexander’s Ragtime Band, the motion picture named after his most famous composition, which had its premiere in London recently, and of which listeners have heard a radio version, was the reason for Irving Berlin’s visit to Europe. The film marks the greatest tribute of Hollywood to this king of Tin Pan Alley, whose seven or eight hundred songs have made him a millionaire. It was during the early ‘twenties that Berlin’s international reputation, started by "Alexander," became firmly cemented. The series of waltz hits—"All Alone," "Remember," "Always," "What’ll I Do"—made him secure for life. When his talking-picture career became his chief interest and a vital source of income, his development of a more advanced, perhaps more sophisticated style, both in music and lyrics, became apparent, with consequences such as "Cheek to Cheek," "The Piccolino," "Top Hat," "Slumming on Park Avenue," and "This Year’s Kisses." "And what," I asked inevitably, "do you consider your best song?" "Well I’m going to surprise you. I know it’s fashionable nowadays to strike an attitude and say ‘Well, the best thing I did was a little number which the publishers put on the shelf—I never made a penny out of it.’ I don’t believe in that hooey. The best numbers are the ones that are the most popular and vice versa. My best song was ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band.’ At its height it sold two million copies in the States, and made a fortune for tow publishers. That was from 1911, for the first couple of years. I only got a small royalty out of that, up to 1913; then the sales dropped to nothing. Then came the revival recently and it’s a best-seller in America again, and this time I’m making plenty." "Don’t Believe It!" "Don’t you think that a great number of songs like that become popular again because the swing bands take them up?" "Swing music? Don’t believe it! The swing arrangements of popular songs are a double injustice. Unjust to the composer because they don’t respect the original melody; unjust to the arranger because he should be getting the credit—and the cash—for what has virtually become a new composition in his hands. "I believe there’s been some confusion about my opinion on swing music, I’ve heard it and enjoyed it right from the days when they used to get together round an old piano in the saloons and start ‘noodling around’ with the melody. "Jazz, blues, swing, are as much an interpretative form of music as the original ragtime was. It’s emotional music. Take a good swing band into a formal, stiff, society party and even they will react to it. "When I was living in Atlantic City this summer, which is equivalent to your Blackpool, I went down to listen to Benny Goodman’s Orchestra and see the effects his music had on the crowd. Believe me, they reacted just as if they were listening to a speech by the President. Enthusiasm like that can’t die quickly." |
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