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(More customer reviews)It's time to take a good look at the most popular song ever, top selling and most frequently recorded. _White Christmas: The Story of an American Song_ (Scribner) by Jody Rosen not only tells about the song everyone has heard so many times that no one really listens to it anymore, but also about the songwriter, American twentieth century history, and Tin Pan Alley and its descendants. It's a lot of baggage to load upon a pop song, but it is an amazing little song, and the book has a brisk story told with real love of the music and how it was shaped and how it shaped us.
It's a good thing that Irving Berlin didn't write about a Christmas "just like the ones I used to know." He was born Israel Baline in 1888 in a bleak town in Siberia. Russian peasants, drunk with Christmas cheer, often used the holiday as an excuse for pogroms against the Jews, and his first memory is of his house being burned down. Berlin got no formal musical training, but produced hundreds of songs. In January 1940, Berlin worked over the weekend on a song he became very enthusiastic about. He bustled into his office that Monday morning and said, "I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song _I_ ever wrote, it's the best song _anybody_ ever wrote." Christmas 1942 was the first that masses of Americans, soldiers and sailors all over the world, would spend away from home, and could only dream of Christmases just like the ones they used to know. Crosby's version was shipped to them in recordings, and it topped the Hit Parade as a patriotic anthem, displacing "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition." The song signaled that recordings and performers were in and sheet music and songwriters were out. In 1957, Berlin tried to squelch an Elvis Presley version, but couldn't.
Rosen's clear, fully researched book is an essential biography of an American song classic, and will improve your understanding every time you inevitably hear the song again. It encompasses important ideas about the history of modern music, Jewish influence and assimilation, patriotism in song, and the evolution of celebrating Christmas. It is not strictly a Christmas book, for it is about much more than just the season. But it would be fine for those looking for serious and interesting reading for the holidays, or as a gift book for readers who think they have already heard all the song has to say.
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