Free Republic

George Gershwin was a wonderful free and disciplined incarnation of the American spirit. "Why should I limit myself" he said, "to only one woman when I can have as many women as I want?" He understood that he represented his era: “True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.” With Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney, he dominated the crafting of great popular melody in his century, saying: “I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.” The capacity for Great Music is a gift to us from God.

His vow was that the American people “will not allow our country, and all of its values, history, and culture, to be taken from them.” At this point the audience was chanting “USA!” Mr. Trump then laced into “cancel culture,” which he called “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees.” He called it “completely alien to our culture and our values.” It would be one thing were any of the major Democrats saying such things. The cat, though, has got their tongues. Not a peep of support from, say, Vice President Biden...

Israel’s world-renown Shalva Band wowed the crowd at a top Israel-US conference, receiving a heartwarming introduction from President Donald Trump. At the Israeli American Council (IAC) National Summit this weekend, Israel’s Shalva Band took the stage to perform the Irving Berlin classic, “God Bless America.” It was a truly one-of-a-kind moment for everyone present, including the Shalva Band, a group of incredibly talented Israelis with disabilities who make beautiful music together. Following the performance, the president hugged the band members as the crowd roared.

The long arm of the PC police has reached back to the ’30s and arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced the late singer Kate Smith. Smith, who popularized Irving Berlin’s song “God Bless America” and was a female pioneer in early television, recorded songs that today in hindsight are viewed as racist. An old friend, Harry Covert, writes to recall the early days of black-and-white TV when he (and I) watched Smith’s television program. Covert remembers one show interrupted by a news bulletin announcing the attempted assassination of Harry S. Truman by militant Puerto Rican activists. He notes that today’s Puerto Ricans...

Happy Easter and Happy Passover to our readers around the world. We moved our Saturday movie night to Good Friday for Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion Of The Christ. So, for the weekend proper, here's a special podcast, audiophonically adapted from an essay that appears in Mark's book A Song For The Season: the story of the most famous pop hit about Easter - sort of. Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade" has its beginnings in a very obscure chin-up song from the Great War written in 1917. In this audio special, Mark traces its origins as a First World War morale...

Welcome to the first of our December celebrations of the big hits from the Christmas songbook. We start with one of the most beloved seasonal numbers, which celebrates its 75th birthday this holiday season: In December 1942, the Number One hit on the Billboard chart was the very first record of this song by Bing Crosby. This special Song of the Week audio edition includes rare material from the Steyn archive and a special live performance of "White Christmas". Mark visits the home of Mary Ellin Barrett, daughter of the man who gave us "God Bless America", "Blue Skies", "Easter...

I grew up in a family of 11 children in the days before SUVs. So we took our road trips in two-car caravans led by a steamy station wagon with crank-handle windows and hot vinyl upholstery. That wagon was always packed with obstreperous kids singing obnoxious songs. But one song we were emphatically discouraged from singing has now emerged as a theme song for John Kerry's presidential campaign. My father loved popular music and never ceased being interested in it. In the 1960s, he happily escorted my older sisters to see the Beatles. A decade later, he bought me tickets...

A pillar of contemporary leftism is the notion of "white privilege." Given that a generation of high school and college students are being taught that a great number of "unearned privileges" accrue to white Americans -- the charge of white privilege demands rational inquiry. The assertion turns out to be largely meaningless. And more significantly, it does great harm to blacks. First, no reasonable person can argue that white privilege applies to the great majority of whites, let alone to all whites. There are simply too many variables other than race that determine individual success in America. And if it...

Irving Berlin, 1906. Photo from Wikimedia Commons Late in 1940, so the story goes, Irving Berlin found himself in Los Angeles writing songs for the movie "Holiday Inn," starring two of the biggest stars of the moment, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.  The challenge Berlin had set himself was enormous: to capture the spirit of major holidays in popular song.  And the Christmas song had to be the best of all.  Nothing about Los Angeles, where he found himself, reminded him of the Christmases he'd known as a young boy back in New York City. The snow, the cold...

Today is Tuesday, October 20, the 293rd day of 2015. There are 72 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On October 20, 1965, in one of the more colorful moments of his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson, recovering from gall bladder surgery at Bethesda Naval Medical Center, pulled up his shirt and jacket to show off his abdominal scar to reporters and photographers. (Although critics were appalled by the display, Johnson later said he was trying to dispel rumors that he'd actually been operated on for cancer.) On this date: In 1714, the coronation of Britain's King George...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzKRdPStAF8 The Christmas season is the inspiration for this week's feature. "Holiday Inn", the film that introduced the world to the perennial classic song "White Christmas". Easily one of the best musical films of the 1940s. Enjoy.

Tin Pan Alley, the home of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and other great American songwriters, is up for sale. Five buildings on West 28th Street in Manhattan's Chelsea district are being offered as a group for $44 million. A listing on real estate Web site Loopnet recommends that the buildings be torn down and a high-rise take their place. Preservationists and tenants aren't happy... Tin Pan Alley housed a concentration of music publishers and songwriters from the 1890s to the 1950s.

Always: A singer’s journey through the life of Irving Berlinhttp://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1998/7/1998_7_74.shtml http://tinyurl.com/mnk6m American Heritage Magazine November 1998 Volume 49, Issue 7 BY SUSANNA McCORKLE Like most baby boomers, I grew up hearing his songs and taking them for granted. I never gave a thought to who Irving Berlin was or how he had come to write the music that flowed through our lives. In the 1970s I saw a newspaper photograph of him singing “God Bless America” in the Nixon White House during Watergate and immediately consigned both him and the song to the “wrong” side. When I became a singer...

Splashed across the top in block letters were the words "This Is the Army." It was an original cast recording of a Broadway musical revue produced in 1942, America's first full year of World War II, produced by Irving Berlin to raise money for the war effort. The cast members were all soldiers. … I was awestruck, looking through this window to the heroic times my parents' generation had known.… Today, their optimism seems quite logical, because we know who won the war. But America wasn't winning then… After the slaughter at Pearl Harbor in late 1941 had come the...

Almost as soon as his song "God Bless America" began generating revenue, Irving Berlin established The God Bless America Fund, to benefit America's youth. Over $6,000,000 has been distributed to date, primarily to two youth organizations with which Mr. and Mrs. Berlin were personally involved: The Girl Scout Council of Greater New York, and the Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts of America. These councils do not discriminate on any basis and are committed to serving all segments of New York City's diverse youth population. In recent years the Fund has distributed about $200,000 annually, though the figures...