Song pluggers were a big part of the growing music industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Before recorded music could be distributed, publishers hired professional songwriters to churn out new hits. Then songs were aggressively promoted through “pluggers,” who performed songs in vaudeville theaters and other venues to boost sheet music sales.

The job of a song plugger was to get the public excited enough to buy the sheet music and play the songs at home.

A song was considered a “hit” based on how many copies of its sheet music were sold. Newspapers started printing lists of the best-selling sheet music of the week. (This tradition continues with published lists of all sorts of top-selling forms of entertainment.)

How Music Spreads

Americans have always loved music, but before record players and radios, the only way to introduce new music was for people to hear another person sing or play music they didn’t know.

During the 19^th century, families might sit together in their parlors or on their porches to sing hymns or family favorites. Violins, banjos, and harmonicas were common in the home.

If a community was big enough to support a theater, then musical performances and vaudeville often presented new material.  But growth was slow since new music had to spread community by community. 

Train travel helped. Pullman porters worked hard but had idle time during trains stops. They met with local people to sing and talk. As they got back on their route, they took the music with them.

The Golden Age of the Piano

After the Civil War, pianos became a longed-for household luxury item. An upright piano cost several hundred dollars, but families often saved for them as they offered great entertainment for all members of the family. From 1869-1905, manufacturers sold upward of 261,000 annually.  

Along with instrument sales came a growing need for sheet music. While some people can play by ear, most need music.  The time was right for this growing trend, because printing methods were easier and cheaper. The use of lithography (printing from slabs of limestone with rolled-on ink) made printing accessible to more publishers. Mustic publishing could expand in ways that no one dreamed.

Companies printed everything from patriotic marches to folk songs like “Oh! Susanna,” as well as waltzes, sentimental songs, and ragtime.

By 1890, many department stores opened counters for the sale of sheet music, and its popularity brought the price down. Customers could expect to pay from 10-25 cents per song.

Song Demonstrators in Stores

As department stores set up sheet music departments, they needed ways to boost sales, so they added “song demonstrators.” Many big city department stores had mezzanines where they placed pianos. When a customer selected a few sheets of music that were of interest, the sheet music was sent to the pianist. With luck, the customer bought the music requested—and perhaps a few other people in the store who heard the songs decided to buy the music, too.

These music demonstrators were store employees who were top-flight at sight-reading new music.

Music Publishers Needed Song Pluggers

The first music publisher to employ song pluggers is thought to be the Harding Music Company, located in the Bowery in New York City. The store originally sold instruments and classical sheet music, but times were changing.

The neighborhood was filled with vaudeville theaters and saloons. When one of the sons inherited the business, Frank Harding (1864-1939), knew it was time for change. He loved the lively musicians who hung out around the vaudeville theaters. He began buying and publishing their songs. (Some said that Frank traded beer for songs.) 

Harding then saw that he needed to hire performers to introduce the songs in other parts of town. To expand his reach beyond the theaters in his neighborhood, he hired singers and pianists to go uptown to bars and sporting events to promote the songs he published. 

Tin Pan Alley

As the music business developed, several companies established their businesses in Manhattan in the west twenties (between 5^th and 6^th avenues). Because the companies had no air conditioning, windows were left open during warm weather, and the cacophony of music could be heard around the area. People started referring to the neighborhood as Tin Pan Alley.

The publishers soon had their own song pluggers appearing across the city.  

Who were Tin Pan Alley Song Pluggers?

A good song needed to be presented in such a way that listeners want to hear it again, so the best song pluggers were magnetic performers who could “sell” a song.

Some pluggers had connections with some of the big stars of the day. If they had performed with someone like Al Jolson or Bing Crosby, they could put in an “ask” to the big star. If Jolson or Crosby performed it, the song was likely to be a hit.

 For men (and it usually was men) who wanted to become composers, music publishers hired staff composers and lyricists. These employees could improve their situation if they could also perform well–someone had to plug it.

Composers were also incentivized by a change in copyright law in 1909. Congress passed the Copyright Act. For the first time, composers could collect royalties for public performance of their work.

Some Big Names Started as Song Pluggers

While there were many pluggers, only a few song pluggers achieved lasting fame. A few of them are names we still know today: Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Lil Hardin Armstrong (Louis Armstrong’s wife), to name a few.

Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidor Baline) was a particularly astute song plugger who composed and plugged for Tin Pan Alley for several years. Eventually he refined the process when he moved to Los Angeles to write music for the movies.

Berlin’s Early Years

The Baline family (the name with which they immigrated) fled Russia in 1893 to escape persecution. Isidore/Irving (1888-1989) was age 5 at the time. While the lower east side of New York offered community and a level of safety, life was not easy.  Irving Berlin’s father, a cantor, could find no appropriate employment, so he worked for a kosher butcher. His mother was a midwife. After school, the children did what they could to add to the family income.

Like other young boys, Irving sold newspapers on street corners. He found that if he sang while selling, customers would sometimes pitch him another penny or two. He told his mother that his dream was to work at one of the cafes with singing waiters. 

Within a couple of years, Berlin’s “dream” came true. As a singing waiter at the Pelham Café, Berlin found he could fiddle around on the piano when there were no customers. This brought about his first musical sale. He and the pianist collaborated on a song called “Marie from Sunny Italy.”  Berlin wrote the lyrics, and when the song sold, he earned 33 cents for the rights.

Playing the Black Keys

Like other untrained composers, Berlin mostly played from the black keys. It made it easier to find harmonies, and he needed to work with only a five-note scale. With this simplified system, he could translate the melodies in his head to the piano.

As he progressed in his career, he was introduced to the “transposing piano.” This invention dated to 1801. British instrument maker Edward Ryley came up with a way for pianists to change the key in which they played without having to transpose the written music. The transposing piano had a lever under the keyboard that could be shifted, thus moving the entire keyboard laterally. (See below for a photograph of one of Irving Berlin’s transposing pianos, currently on view at The Weitzman National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia.)

 For accompanists, these pianos made it easier for them to switch keys to suit a particular vocalist. For Berlin, it opened a new world.   With a transposing piano, he could work from the keys with which he was comfortable (generally composing in F sharp). When he was satisfied, he could use the transposing piano to create the ultimate sound he wanted to hear. 

 Berlin was known for saying: “The black keys are right there, under your fingers. The key of C is for people who study music.”

From Song Plugger to Top-Selling Composer

Berlin’s early songs capitalized on his heritage with “Yiddish Eyes” and “The Yiddish Ball Player,” but he soon put to use all that he learned as a waiter, a plugger, and as a lyricist.  In 1911, his song “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sold a million copies.

As Irving Berlin’s success grew, the movie business beckoned. When he first arrived in Los Angeles in the 1920s, musical movies were not particularly popular, but there was employment. Though the films were not necessarily big hits, Irving Berlin had a couple of songs that emerged from that time. Both “Mammy” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz” brought him enough fame that he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Since the entertainment industry slowed during the Depression, Berlin returned to New York. Then in 1935, he received an offer from RKO Productions that took him back to L.A. With this new opportunity, Berlin began studying how to get a song to “pop” in a movie.

Song Plugging in the Movies

Berlin saw that since movies offered longer sustained entertainment for audiences, featured songs could be longer, too. With added time in the soundtrack, audiences were more likely to remember it.

Audiences also responded positively when a well-liked tune was used again. Another character could echo the song that had been introduced, or the song could be used during dance scenes.

By this time, songs were being heard on radio, and flat disc records were being made, but sheet music was still popular. These small refinements led to increased music sales of all types.

Irving Berlin left behind a massive legacy, composing an estimated 1,500 songs. He rose from humble beginnings as a singing newsboy and waiter to become a master song plugger and legendary composer. “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (1911), “God Bless America” (1938), “White Christmas” (1942), and “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1946) are just a few of the songs for which he’ll long be remembered.

Like any good plugger, he knew how to bring home a song.

Thank you to The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History for added information and the photo use of Irving Berlin’s transposing piano.

 The tagline of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, “Where stars are born and legends are made,” captures its essence perfectly.

The theater, located at 253 West 125^th Street in New York City, first opened in 1914. It was owned by a man named Sidney Cohen who leased it to businessmen Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon. The men opened it as a burlesque theater, which was popular at that time. It was known as Hurtig & Seamon’s New Theatre and featured raucous and suggestive comedy, appealing mostly to white men.

By the 1930s, the anti-obscenity movement was making it more difficult for these types of shows to continue.

Renamed the Apollo Theater

In 1934, owner Sidney Cohen turned the theater over to Leo Brecher and Frank Schiffman, two businessmen who owned most of the theaters in Harlem. They transformed it to a performance space for black entertainment. Frank Schiffman was the face of the operation; Brecher operated behind the scenes. Together, they built a business that attracted the best of the best in black dance, music, and comedy.

The Apollo became a beacon for performers from all over. The style of entertainment varied with the years. Comedy, dance, swing, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, hip hop, and more have all been welcomed on the Apollo stage.

Everyone Came

The Apollo eventually showcased every big-name African American performer. Many launched and grew their careers there: Dancers Charles “Cholly” Atkins, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson; band leaders Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington; comedians Redd Foxx and Jackie “Moms” Mabley; and musicians ranging from Louis Armstrong, James Brown, and Lionel Hampton to Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Wilson, and the Jackson Five.

White performers heard about what was happening on 125^th Street, and many came to study the magic. Milton Berle was just one of the artists who visited the Apollo regularly to figure out how to transform the jokes he heard there for his downtown audiences.

Musicians like Elvis Presley and John Lennon arrived in New York and had the Apollo at the top of their must-see New York destinations.

Amateur Night at the Apollo

Long before there was anything like ABC’s American Idol, Amateur Night at the Apollo offered the opportunity for newcomers to be discovered. It was held every Wednesday night for almost 80 years. (The event started in 1934, but there were a few years when the contest did not take place).

Prizes were awarded each week. Performers could return for additional competitions. If a performer received four first-place awards, they were offered a one-week professional engagement at the theater—a golden opportunity.

During the first 20 years, an estimated fifteen thousand amateur performers tried their luck with the Apollo audiences. Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey, Gladys Knight, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, and Billy Kenny of the Ink Spots are just a few of the performers who broke through on Amateur Night.

Program Celebrating the Apollo

To celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the theater’s opening, a special event was presented in 2011. It was produced by the Apollo Theater Foundation and the National Museum of African American History. Commentary from experts brought to life stories of the Apollo.

Robert G. O’Meally, the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, opened the discussion by stressing the strong sense of community that was part of the Apollo. In film clips of performances over the years, there was a consistent sense of audience involvement with shouts of pleasure and encouragement as the performers went on.

Former dance critic for Dance Magazine Zita Allen described the nonstop schedule of the chorus girls who performed regularly at the Apollo.  Mel Watkins, author of Stepin Fetchit: The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry, gave a great overview of comedians. He talked of some of the unknown comics who got started there, including Moms Mabley.

More Experts on the Apollo

James Brown was famous for his terrific performances at the Apollo. Greg Tate, editor of Everything but the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture, talked of how Brown considered the Apollo an incubator for developing his music. Brown earned great respect for the precision with which his band members played.

Herb Boyd, author of Baldwin’s Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin, talked of the Apollo’s intersection with white and black culture and the role the theater played in helping raise money for civil rights.

Unforgettable

One of the film clips shown at the public program was particularly remarkable, providing the audience with one of those “I’ll never forget this” moments. If you watch this clip, you will understand the magic that emanated from the Apollo for so many years.

While the clip is from the film, “Stormy Weather” (1943), the featured performers were regulars at the Apollo. “Jumpin’ Jive,” stars  Cab Calloway and his band with dancing by the incredibly gifted Nicholas Brothers.

Stay with the clip until about 1:45 into it to see some remarkable dancing. Then continue until the end–the last minute is awesome.

The Apollo Today

In the Spring of 2020, The Wall Street Journal interviewed Jonelle Procope, CEO of the Apollo. She discussed with the reporter the plans for growing the Apollo by adding two new performance spaces.

While the original Apollo featured a variety show format, Procope pointed out that the new space will be different.  The goal is to support black artists by giving them space to test out their works. Special focus will be given to artists telling the African American narrative and stories of the diaspora.

This is the first physical expansion in The Apollo’s history.  In addition to a top-to-bottom restoration and renovation of the historic building from 1914, the Apollo now has two new stages just down the street at The Victoria

he Apollo Stages at the Victoria Theater in Harlem, New York is the Apollo Theater’s first physical expansion in its 90-year history. The new space includes two black box theaters, a lobby, exhibition space, and administrative offices.

Today the Apollo Theater offers tours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Follow this link to book your date: https://www.apollotheater.org/tours

Just as the development of e-mail in the 1990s changed the love letter, the technology of the 1920s forever altered the love song.  

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries–before movies, before television, before radio–the most popular form of live entertainment in America was vaudeville, a live variety show consisting of unrelated acts, ranging from acrobats and animal trainers to magicians and musical performances.

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No Way to Amplify Sound

Musical performances, however, could be problematic. Theaters were often large, and there were limited ways that music could be presented to a big audience because there was not yet an effective way to amplify sound.

As a result, the successful singers of the day were those who had stentorian voices and could project. Though nineteenth century songs like Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer” or “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” may have been about love, the only way to perform them was by singing at top volume.

Singing bandleader Rudy Vallee came up with one solution: He used a megaphone to help amplify his voice over the sound of his band. Even after microphones came into use, Vallee was so identified with it that he kept the megaphone as signature prop for his performances.

Acoustical Recordings

Between 1890-1925, music engineers were working to find ways to capture sound as well as amplify it. By the 1910s, the acoustical recording process was being employed. This involved musicians and/or singers crowding around a recording horn (cone) that contained a diaphragm connected to a cutting needle.

The needle rested on a recording medium. As the diaphragm responded to the sounds made by the performers, the needle cut a corresponding groove into the recording material, usually a thin sheet of foil wrapped around a cylinder.

For the recording horn to capture the sound, it was vital for each instrument or singer to be in close proximity to it at the appropriate time. If a certain performer or instrument was to be featured, the other performers stepped quickly out of the way so that the sound from the intended performer could be closest to the cone with its diaphragm. The process involved a lot of awkward jockeying around.

Performers also learned to manipulate sound themselves. For louder and higher notes, they stepped back a bit to avoid distortion. For a softer sound, they needed to move forward so the sound could be picked up by the recording. In general, lower voices were easier to record at this time. And certain instruments could be heard better than others. The banjo, the trumpet, the trombone, and the xylophone were ideal.

All these aspects had an effect on the type of music that was chosen to be recorded.

Another Development Comes Along

The microphone—so called because it was said “to do for the ear what the microscope did for the eye.”—had been a project of many.  Much of the tinkering with the early microphones was to perfect them for use with the telephone.

An inventor in England (David Edward Hughes) was probably the first to create what became known as the carbon button microphone. But inventors in America were having success, too. Emile Berliner, a German-born inventor who worked in Thomas Edison’s laboratories, was among the first to come up with a usable carbon-button microphone in this country.

Edison initially showed no interest in Berliner’s accomplishment, so Berliner sold the rights to his invention to Alexander Graham Bell. Eventually he also went to work for Bell. (Later Edison would weigh in on what needed to be done with the microphone, and he and Berliner went through a fight over the patent.)

Carbon Button Microphone

The carbon button microphone was a drum-like device that enclosed two electric contacts separated by a thin layer of loose carbon. One contact was attached to a diaphragm that vibrated when struck by a sound wave; the other was connected to an output device. This microphone was perfect for telephone because it converted sound into voltage. (Improved versions of the carbon button microphone existed in telephones until the 1980s.)

In the early 1920s, a few radio stations began to operate, and they, too, found the microphone vital. The first commercial radio station broadcast in 1920. By the late 1920s, more people bought radios as they delivered exciting entertainment—much more so than most people could find locally.

Electrical Recording as Well

Along with the progress being made on the microphone, engineers were finding a way to record by using electricity. Developments in these two areas were soon conjoined. As microphones were used to capture the sounds for recordings, musicians soon realized that the microphones permitted them to be heard better in theaters and auditoriums because their sound was amplified.

Changes in Music

These discoveries had a vast effect on music. Instead of a singer belting out a song so that it could be heard in the back row of a theater, these belting singers actually sounded terrible in front of a microphone. They never learned to modulate their tones.

As musicians experimented with what worked, they learned that a new type of music was possible. For the first time, emotions could be conveyed with the sound of the voice. Lyrics could be about love and the tones could be intimate and suggestive, as if the performer was whispering the song to each listener. It became known as “crooning.”

Women loved it, and then as now, women were responsible for spending much of the family budget. As a result, radio stations quickly got on board with songs produced by crooners. Soon they discovered commercials were sometimes more effective when whispered. As more people listened to the radio and began hearing the new sounds that were possible, audiences wanted to see these people in person. The clubs started booking crooners to perform live. In 1932, TheNew York Times ran a headline” Radio Invades Vaudeville: Public Desire to See Microphone Performers Beckons Them to the Footlights—Many Now on Tour.”

Inspired Controversy

Change is usually followed by controversy, and this shift was no different. In The Rise of the Crooners by Michael Pitts and Frank Hoffman, the authors point out that this new form of singing was considered “dangerous.”

In Boston, the Catholic Church’s Cardinal O’Connell came out against crooning, feeling that it corrupted young people and led to bad morals. From a totally different camp, singing teachers condemned the style because they felt the American chest would shrink because of lack of lung development.

Despite this opposition, the popularity of the music grew. Early crooners included some like Al Bowlly and Gene Austin, who are little known today. Rudy Vallee was an exceedingly popular crooner who learned to shift music and acting styles and remained extremely popular. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Nat King Cole were also crooners, all of whom still maintain followings today.

Some Rock and Roll Features Crooning

Though the 1950s ushered in the era of rock and roll, there are still musicians who mix in a crooning-style of song. Norah Jones is certainly in that group, but so, too is someone like Bob Dylan who will add into his repertoire a song like, “To Make You Feel my Love.”

Though the Doors are unlikely crooners, Jim Morrison’s “Touch Me” is a song that has definite crooning roots. After his emphatic, “Come on come on come on come on now touch me baby,” take a listen to “Now I’m gonna love ya, til the heavens stop the rain…” Morrison’s self-declared admiration for Sinatra is more than evident.

Crooning Today

We may no longer call it crooning, but today’s listeners still love a love song now and then. We love words of adoration; we love the musical intimacy, and we savor the feelings we get when a song reminds us of all the aspects of our own lives that inspire love. 

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas has notched many top positions on “best-selling” and “most–recorded” lists. Exact numbers are difficult to pin down even by the careful staff of Guinness Book of World Records.

The song—written in 1940-41 was introduced at a time when sheet music sales were more important than record sales. The following year (1942), many of the “plays” of the recording were on Armed Forces Radio, at a time when the world was at war. Tabulating record sales was low on America’s “to do” list. 

Speaking generally, however, the Bing Crosby recording of the song has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. When the recordings by other artists are added to Crosby’s, the sales of the song reach a very impressive 150 million. The only other song to come near this—and perhaps surpass it—is Elton John’s 1997 recording of Candle in the Wind, a song he wrote in 1973 in memory of Marilyn Monroe but re-recorded in 1997 after Princess Diana died.

Here’s how White Christmas became one of the most successful songs ever.

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin (1880-1989) was born Israel Baline in Tyumen (part of western Siberia). He was the youngest of eight children, six of whom emigrated with their parents to the U.S. in 1893.

His father, a cantor, had trouble finding steady work in America, so the children accepted after-school jobs. Izzy, as Irving was then called, sold newspapers and delivered telegrams during grammar school. After his father died in 1901, Izzy left school and supported himself as a “song plugger.” (Sheet music companies hired “buskers” or “song pluggers” to travel the city and perform new songs in saloons, vaudeville theaters, and on street corners. By introducing a song to the public in this way, the companies hoped to stimulate sheet music sales.)

Singing Waiter

Izzy had a fine singing voice and a superior ear for music. At 16, he became a singing waiter at the Pelham Café in Chinatown in New York City. He taught himself the basics of piano playing, but he was never skilled at it, nor did he ever learn to write music. But his time at the Pelham Café gave him invaluable experience. He began composing with a partner, and because he performed what he wrote, he learned about audience reaction and what makes a song a crowd-pleaser.

His first published song—written and published while he was still at the Pelham Café—led to his name change. The song was called Marie from Sunny Italy. When the sheet music came back from the publisher, there was a typo: I. Baline became I. Berlin.

Berlin went on to be one of the most successful songwriters of all time. His songs, listed here,  have been and are still recorded by top performers.

White Christmas was to become the most popular Christmas song ever written. It continues to be a December perennial, recorded by many solo artists and orchestras.

Writing White Christmas

When people today talk about White Christmas, the conversation usually begins with, “Did you know it was written in Beverly Hills?” or “…Palm Springs?” The thought of this ballad to a wintry white holiday being written by a pool in 80-degree weather seems to fascinate.

So was White Christmas written in California? According to Jody Rosen, author of White Christmas: The Story of an American Song, the song may have been drafted in or near Los Angeles, but it was undoubtedly finished in New York or at the Berlin family’s weekend house in the Catskills. Like writers of all types, Berlin had a habit of writing something and putting it away if he wasn’t satisfied. He called these his “trunk songs.”

Song First Shared with Staff

The first time the song was introduced to his staff was on January 8, 1940. On that day, Berlin appeared in his business office to meet with Helmy Kresa, the fellow who scored his music. Berlin would sing the song and work carefully with Kresa, until the melody Kresa wrote sounded just as Berlin heard it in his head.

When Berlin came in, he announced that he wrote the song “over the weekend.” The Berlin family was in New York through the holidays that year, so he must have written or at least polished it there.

White Christmas was also originally written as a satire. As Berlin envisioned it, the song would be part of a musical revue. It would be performed tongue-in-cheek by sophisticates, drinks in hand, standing around a Hollywood pool surrounded by palm trees.

White Christmas To Be Part of Movie

That spring (1940), Berlin signed to do a musical for Paramount. The plot Berlin had in mind featured a vaudeville performer retiring to run a country inn. The gimmick was that it was a “holiday inn,” open for overnight guests only on holidays. Berlin would provide a holiday-themed score that would take viewers through the year of holidays.

Casting for the film and early rehearsals for Holiday Inn began in the autumn of 1941. Irving Berlin knew his recently finished song, White Christmas, was a good one. The deal he made with Paramount was that White Christmas would be part of the film only if Paramount managed to sign Bing Crosby (1903-1977). Crosby was already a big star.

World Shocked by Attack

In the midst of planning for Holiday Inn, Berlin, Crosby, and all Americans were rocked by national tragedy.

On December 7, 1941, a surprise attack by the Japanese did unfathomable damage and caused great loss of life at the American port at Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt summoned his military leaders to the White House and ordered a bombing raid on Japan. The country was at war.

Just a few days after this—December 24, 1941—Bing Crosby introduced White Christmas, perhaps as a note of hope, on his highly successful radio broadcast, Kraft Music Hall.

By late December of 1941, Americans were enlisting in the military in record numbers as America mobilized for war. They heard White Christmas not as a spoof but as a longing for days “just like the ones I used to know.”  The lyrics took on a whole new meaning for soldiers on their way overseas.

Movie Release

When Holiday Inn was released in 1942, the hit song was as expected: Be Careful It’s My Heart, which tied into the Valentine’s Day celebration at the fictitious Holiday Inn.

Berlin—ever the savvy song plugger–was happy about this as he planned a push for White Christmas closer to the December holiday.

What caught Berlin by surprise, however, were the requests for White Christmas on radio starting in the early fall. By October, White Christmas was topping the charts.

Berlin was worried the song’s popularity would die down, but his worries were unfounded. On November 21, White Christmas began a 10-week run on top of the Hit Parade.

In 1942, one million copies of sheet music and 2 million copies of Bing Crosby’s recording sold…it was huge, and it’s a big part of holiday music every year since.

Song Writing Style of the Era

Songs like White Christmas, written during the Tin Pan Alley era, had a prescribed format. A 16-bar verse led into a 32-bar chorus, and with almost all songs it was the chorus that people remembered.

The verse of White Christmas became problematic for Berlin when he saw what people looked for in listening to the song. His verse, which set up the satirical scene he envisioned, was:

The sun is shining, the grass is green

The orange and palm trees sway

There’s never been such a day

In Beverly Hills, L. A.

But it’s December the 24th

And I am longing to be up north….

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…

(Chorus continues)

Berlin rapidly saw that the soldiers took a very different sentiment from White Christmas, and he wanted to honor the spirit of his listeners. He notified his publishing company that going forward all recordings and sheet music should be published without the first verse.

Many Years Later Verse Reappears

For many years, no one thought about the original first verse of the song. Then in 1989, Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002), star of the 1954 movie, White Christmas, recorded the song. She included the first verse.

This became the start of speculation as to where Berlin was when he wrote the song.

Song Hits Right Note

While most other holiday songs promise a time of unmitigated joy and merriment, the melancholy undertone of White Christmas continues to appeal. “Fairy tale” holidays are rare, and White Christmas reminds us that others, too, identify with the song’s ambivalence. Will this year’s holiday ever equal the ones of the past?

Maybe not, but we can always dream and share our dream with others.

Berlin and Crosby, a Great Team

Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby were forever united by what turned out to be one of the best decisions either of them ever made. Berlin imagined the lyrics and the tune; Crosby could evoke just the right feeling.

“It’s a little late—after almost twenty-seven years—to send you a fan letter about White Christmas,” wrote Irving Berlin to Bing Crosby in 1967. “But I heard you sing it last night on the Hollywood Palace show. Not only were you the first, but you remain the best.”

Later Berlin was to write that after Berlin first played White Christmas for Bing Crosby at Paramount, Crosby said, “You don’t have to worry about this one, Irving.”

***

To read the story of how the song, White Christmas, was part of the coded signal about the fall of Saigon, click here.

And for more about the music technology of the era, read “How a 1920s Technology Changed Music.”