There is a good helping of popular music history wrapped up in this issue. The brothers Gershwin, who would go on to become two of the primary pillars of the American songbook and of American musical theater, heard one of their songs sung on a Broadway stage for the very first time in 1918. Like Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” seven years earlier, it was one of the many songs hinged to the ragtime craze. The song, “The Real American Folk Song (Is A Rag),” (page 26) was sung by Nora Bayes in the Broadway hit Ladies First. George Gershwin was then traveling with Miss Bayes as her pianist, a propitious opportunity for him to suggest a few of his original tunes for the show. He got three of them interpolated into the score. As Joan Peyser points out in her book, The Memory Of All That: The Life of George Gershwin (Hal Leonard Publishing), George looked for work in those days wherever he could find it, as a song plugger, rehearsal pianist, arranger, and entertainer.

Irving Berlin was never the pianist Gershwin was, one who could plug songs for publishers, accompany performers, or play for his supper, so Irving dug right in to turning out songs as prolifically as he could to earn his keep—at least four or five a week. He discarded many, but from 1907, the year of his first published piece, “Marie From Sunny Italy,” until 1914, the year of his first great success, the aforementioned “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” he had 190 songs published (not to mention the many unpublished and discarded), 117 for which he wrote both words and music including “Snookey Ookums” (page 12), one of the many novelties he wrote for vaudeville performers. Others include “My Wife’s Gone To The Country, Hoorah! Hoorah!” and “Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars.” We’ll filter some of these early novelty gems into upcoming issues as we can.

By the time 1936 rolled around, Irving Berlin was a household name, and the movie, Follow The Fleet, elevated his popularity even more. Starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, and Harriet Hilliard (soon to marry bandleader Ozzie Nelson, the two going on to Ozzie and Harriet fame), the movie has as its finale the song that many think was the best song Berlin wrote for any movie, “Let’s Face The Music And Dance”…

There may be trouble ahead, But while there’s moonlight and music And love and romance, Let's face the music and dance. Before the fiddlers have fled…

Songs and lyrics do not get better than this. Turn to page 8 for the rest of this classic.

Mariah Carey’s No. 1 hit, “Hero,” is historic as well in that she, who also wrote it, has become the best-selling female pop artist of all time.

“Wedding Song—There Is Love,” is historically one of the most requested wedding songs of all time, having been written by Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, who generously donated all proceeds from it to charity, just as Irving Berlin did with “God Bless America,” for which the proceeds go to the Boy Scouts of America.

Another piece of song history from the distaff side is that Peggy Lee, or as she was always introduced, Miss Peggy Lee, found the top of the Hit Parade and a gold record for the very first time with her 1948 hit, “Mañana,” which she co-wrote with her husband, Dave Barbour (page 56).

The histories and stories behind the songs go on and on, and, as always, we provide mini-bios on the first page of each one. We can only do this thanks to researchers, chroniclers, biographers and musicologists such as Robert Lissauer, Roy Hemming, Ed Jablonsky, William Zinnser, Wilfrid Sheed, Joan Peyser, Donald Stubblebine, Charles Hamm, William Hyland, Gene Lees, Robert Kimball, and so many more who, through their writings, have embraced with loving hands the ties that keep us all connected to what has come to be called The Great American Songbook.

-Ed Shanaphy