246 PART 2 | FROM THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORLD WAR I
melody, and hum it out to something defi nite.” Unable to read or write music
notation, he would then dictate the fi nished song to a musical secretary. But if
“humming out” sounds like a casual process, Berlin’s perfectionist streak made
it anything but that. A friend recalls having more than once sat “beside Irving
at his tiny piano” and listened while he composed. “He would go over and over
a lyric until it sounded perfect to my ears. Then he’d scrap the whole thing and
begin over again. When I asked Irving what was wrong, he invariably said, ‘It
isn’t simple enough.’”
To highlight the variety of Tin Pan Alley genres, an edition of the songs Berlin
wrote between 1907 and 1914 divides them into groups: (1) ballads, (2) novelty
songs, (3) ragtime and other dance songs, and (4) show songs. Ballads stood the
closest in style and mood to the older Victorian songs; a novelty song sketched
a brief, comic story, often pertaining to customs of the day; ragtime songs
included all numbers with that word in their titles or that mention ragtime
in their texts; and show songs were those performed in a stage production in
Berlin’s own day.
The years 1912–17 have been described as both the end of Victorian calm and
the beginning of a cultural revolution. And Berlin’s early work embodies both,
mixing old-fashioned waltz songs and ballads with such novelties as “My Wife’s
Gone to the Country (Hurrah! Hurrah!)” and “If You Don’t Want My Peaches
(You’d Better Stop Shaking My Tree).” Ethnicity was a key subject in those years, for
immigrants poured into New York’s melting pot until 1914, when war broke out
in Europe. The popular theater maintained black stereotypes from the minstrel
show and added other groups, each with its own built-in story. Thus, in addition
to Negro dialect songs with black characters, Berlin’s early work includes songs
with Italian, German, Irish, and Jewish personae, each singing in a stereotypical
stage dialect, and even a few “rube” songs involving gullible country folk.
Three 1911 songs show Berlin celebrating the spirit of those eager to end
American Victorianism once and for all. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” responds
to the charisma of black musicians and the excitement of their playing. “That
Mysterious Rag” recognizes the style’s haunting traits and removes it from a
racial setting. And in “Everybody’s Doing It Now,” ragtime is an infectious dance
music—a fad uniting younger Americans in a spirit of uninhibited fun.
To present-day audiences, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (LG 10.2) may seem
free of black references, but the name Alexander itself was associated with black
minstrel-show characters, and the endearment “honey,” in the very fi rst line,
was a common feature in Negro dialect songs but not in songs with white char-
acters (the same was true of “baby”). Although the song lacks ragtime syncopa-
tions, it has a verse in one key and a chorus in the key pitched a fi fth lower: the
subdominant relationship found between the opening strains and the trio of
a march, another reminder of how closely those two genres were connected.
The urging of the text—“Come on and hear / Come on and hear / Alexander’s
Ragtime Band”—conveys the buzzing excitement that black infl uence brought
to popular song. Most of all, Berlin’s song registers the impact of black musical
performance: Alexander’s band can take a conventional bugle call, or the fi rst
phrase of Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks at Home,” and make it sound “like you’ve
never heard before.” Just thinking about Alexander and his bandsmen is enough
to make the song’s persona bubble with high spirits.
The recording of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” that accompanies Listening
Guide 10.2 is typical of its era. The studio ensemble, which sounds like a smallLG 10.2Berlin’s song genresethnic novelty songs172028_10_231-253_r2_mr.indd 246 23/01/13 10:26 AM