![]() ![]() He dropped out of school and by 19 was working in the lower levels of Tin Pan Alley. Born in 1888 in Siberia, Berlin came to the US with his family at age five and grew up in the tenements of Manhattan's Lower East Side. The story of the song is central here, but along with those pertinent details, freelance journalist Rosen describes the changes in music since the 1940s and examines the role of Jews in the promotion of Christmas culture, a role that was “more profound than entrepreneurial savvy.” He suggests that Ira Berlin, a refugee from pogroms who with sheer chutzpah wrote “a Christmas anthem that buried all traces of the holiday’s Christian origins beneath three feet of driven snow” illustrates greater subtleties at work. Informative and thoughtful account of a song that became a wartime anthem, pioneered the evolution of holiday music, and “paved the way for the new music” sold on records rather than as sheet music. ![]()
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