Sometimes the hypersophisticated tunesmiths hail from small-town Peru, Ind., like Cole Porter. And sometimes the heartfelt songwriters, the ones capable of moonshine lullabies and Christmases that are both merry and bright, come from Lower East Side flophouses and saloons.
That’s where a preteen Izzy Baline, who would soon become the century-spanning troubadour Irving Berlin (1888-1989), hawked newspapers that earned him half a cent a copy. Less than a decade after he left his family’s Cherry Street tenement at age 13, his songs were bringing in 2 cents per copy of sheet music — and some of them sold 500,000 copies. This miraculous ascent makes up the breeziest sequence in James Kaplan’s empathic biography “Irving Berlin: New York Genius.” Like his subject, though, Kaplan ultimately finds this pace impossible to maintain.
Read Full Article »