Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin

Berlin came from a poor immigrant family and began his career as a singing waiter, but by the time he was nineteen he was publishing his songs and quickly found fame with "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911. In the extraordinary six decades that followed, Berlin wrote one popular hit after another: "Blue Skies," "Always," "Cheek to Cheek," "White Christmas," "God Bless America," "There's No Business Like Show Business," and many, many more. He also wrote a number of the classics of musical theater's Golden Age, climaxing with Annie Get Your Gun. He penned three Astaire and Rogers films--Top Hat, Carefree, and Follow the Fleet--as well as the scores of Holiday Inn, Easter Parade, and other movies. The breadth of his accomplishments is staggering.

Berlin's entire oeuvre is here--the lyrics of more than 1,200 songs (400 of which have never before appeared in print), along with anecdotal, historical, and musicological commentary and dozens of photographs.

This beautiful volume is an invaluable contribution to the understanding and enjoyment of popular music in our time.

Gathered together in one volume for the first time: all of the incomparable song lyrics of Irving Berlin, whose career and work are the most important and all-encompassing in the history of American popular music.

Berlin came from a poor immigrant family and began his career as a singing waiter, but by the time he was nineteen he was publishing his songs and quickly found fame with "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911. In the extraordinary six decades that followed, Berlin wrote one popular hit after another: "Blue Skies," "Always," "Cheek to Cheek," "White Christmas," "God Bless America," "There's No Business Like Show Business," and many, many more. He also wrote a number of the classics of musical theater's Golden Age, climaxing with Annie Get Your Gun. He penned three Astaire and Rogers films—Top Hat, Carefree, and Follow the Fleet—as well as the scores of Holiday Inn, Easter Parade, and other movies. The breadth of his accomplishments is staggering.

Berlin's entire oeuvre is here—the lyrics of more than 1,200 songs (400 of which have never before appeared in print), along with anecdotal, historical, and musicological commentary and dozens of photographs.

This beautiful volume is an invaluable contribution to the understanding and enjoyment of popular music in our time.

Publishers Weekly

With "God Bless America" sung at every public event and Irving Berlin's name on the lips of every network anchor (Berlin wrote the anthem in 1938) there's bound to be new interest in The Complete Works of Irving Berlin. Editors Robert Kimball and Linda Emmet focus on Berlin's lyrics, of course, but also provide brief biographical vignettes in this oversized compendium. That the master of American music wrote alternative, humorous verses to what's now his most famous song ("God bless America/ Land I enjoy/ No discussions with the Russians/ Till they stop sending arms to Hanoi") is just one of the small but fascinating revelations. Illus. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Robert Kimball was educated at Yale College and Yale Law School. He has been the music critic of the New York Post and is the co-author or editor of many books on musical theater, including Cole, the celebrated book about Cole Porter that he edited with Brendan Gill. He also edited for the Complete Lyrics series the volumes of Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Frank Loesser. He is co-editor, with Robert Gottlieb, of Reading Lyrics. He lives in New York.