Children Listen

I’m thinking tonight about the song “White Christmas.” Which celebrates snow, and that day most sacred to Christians. Except it was written by a Hebrew, ensconced in snowless southern California.

The song, it came to the Hebrew—Irving Berlin—from out of the night. Where all the best things, always, come.

The next morning, he said to a secretary, "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."

Like so many of the bald, bold-ass, tall tales of the Americans: if this is not true, it ought to be.

The song then went to the top of the charts—white and black—on the pipes of a gage-blowing Anglo-Irish crooner who hung out at all times with black jazz musicians; positively worshipping Louis Armstrong, pronouncing him “the beginning and the end of music in America." These musicians in turn urged: “The thing you have to understand about Bing Crosby is that he was the first hip white person born in the United States.”

Crosby was at first nonplussed by the song, saying only “I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving." No kidding. Crosby later disclaimed any credit for the song’s success, claiming “a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully.”

He once told his nephew his toughest gig ever was singing “White Christmas” at an outdoor show in France in December 1944: “He had to stand there and sing 'White Christmas' with 100,000 GIs in tears without breaking down himself. And of course a lot of those boys were killed in the Battle of the Bulge a few days later.”

All of this to me represents what is best of America: sad, silly; black, Hebrew, white; a big bundle of weird and wrong, that somehow ends up right. America, it is not the Kleagle. It’s just not. Though the stupid and the boring, they would have you believe that. What it more is, is how somebody once said “Crosby came to embody for many what an American was supposed to be: decent but a trifle distant, good-humored and democratic and unflappable.” And: it is “White Christmas.” Just like the ones. We used to know.

[video:https://youtu.be/J-6hLTjs8oY]

Share
up
11 users have voted.

Comments

janis b's picture

up
5 users have voted.

was an episode of "Legends Of Tomorrow" where a group of time travelers try to infiltrate a party of Nazi officers, pretending that one of them ("Martin Stein") is "Hitler's favorite singer." The Nazis beg him to perform for them, so he sings "Hitler's favorite song" - "Edelweiss". He had the Nazis crying. A silly show, but a beautiful and hilarious scene.

up
4 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFBdSBiP1hA]

This is song by a Nazi-hating refugee. Anybody who flees their own country because of racial discrimination can relate to this and cry.

up
5 users have voted.

NYCVG

up
1 user has voted.

NYCVG

TheOtherMaven's picture

up
0 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Lookout's picture

another of my favorites by him
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64rulm3CFhg]

He was prolific.

Thanks for the reminder of Irving.

up
4 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Dawn's Meta's picture

up
4 users have voted.

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.