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CuRRent siogRaphy Meanwhile Berlin, the. "busker," graduated into Berlin, the vaudevillian.His frst Broad- way appearance was in Shubert's Ug and Down ing year he took part in the annual Friars Frolic. Variety wrote, in phrases strikingly dissimilar from its streamlined prose of today, that he "has a dandy style in delivering a song In uop dd p y $1,000 weekly. What with royalties from songs.and from the score of Zigfeld's Follies of 1912,Berlin's income was by this time said to be in the nhn puykgrs ooo'oor$ jo pooyioqysne was additional incomefrom the publishing trio of Henry Waterson, Irving Berlin, and Ted ary 1912 he married eighteen-year-old Dorothy Goctz, the sister of a song-writing friend, and the' South, on July 17, 1912, Mrs, Berlin died Of complications arising from a'cold. One of Berlin's best known early hits, When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam, IRVING BERLIN was the 1913 counterpart of Chatlanoogo Choo Choo. By 1915 Alesander's Ragtime Band had coming home only when he had amassed some sold more than two million copies. That year money for the upkeep of the house. Sometimes Berlin wrote music for the Follies, for Cen tury Girl, and for the London production of hood, looking for her youngest, a shawl over Watch Your Step. In 1916 Berlin,following the custom of some singing waiter at Mike Salter's Pelham Cafe, a not very high-class place to which slumming Jerome Kern, and snatched up a forty-volume parties came on rare occasions. set of Shakespeare for $2,600. That year, At this point Berlin's story becomes con- be fused, according to which biographer one reads. "It's not inspiration with me," he said. Woollcott's version, which many assume to erally I decide in a very prosaic way that be fairiy authentic, states that Berlin was fired going to write something and then 1 sit in 1907 when, left in charge of the cafe, he and do it.. We depend largely on trick fell asleep on the job. His next job, according writers of songs. There's no such thing to Woollcott, was at Jimmy Kelly's on Union new melody. Our work is to connect t Square. There he sang his first published phrases in a new way. y inq Rruy Kunns uosf on se yons 'sBuos In another interview he said: I hay was still a struggling song writer. Plugging absolutely no musical cducation. I am song for Snyder's firm, the Seminary Musi: to read notes. I play the piano in o, Company, Berlin was visited by Max Winslow key, and I must say ! play it terribly." The of Seminary) and some friends who were so difficulty of the one key~was settled'in 1916 impressed with the singer's repertoire that he when a contraption attached to Berlin's upright was offered job at Seminary in 1909.His piano enabled him to change the key by atwist of a cumbersome wheel attached to the right Dorando, a ditty fashioned around the English side of the keyboard. The piano has been Marathon of that year. modernized; now a lever does the trick, but Contrary .to popular opinion Berlin never the upright itself is still a fixture of the'song claimed to have originated ragtime; neverthe- writer's ofhce. less his claim to having been "interpreter-in- In 1917 and 1918 Berlin was in the Army chief"of ragtime is pretty strong, considering which he was starred. The show had a cast of 277 men, played to packed houses.and earned cult, form before Berlin published his first rag. thousands of dollars for the camp fund. Berlin As's matter of fact, he began to publish rag- had been drafted as private which got the time only after moving up to Seminary. His headline "U.S.takes Berlinbut he soon won his srgeants stripes. On leaving the service lished in 1911, introduced by George M.Cohan in 1919 he played in vaudeville at $2,000 weekly. in the Friors' Frolic of that year. It differed He also did the score for the Follies, from from the best of Berlin's published work, says Girl Is Like e Melody. His farewell to the instrumental melody with no words to guide it." Army.was an opus titled I've Got My Captain The lyrics were alvaged from an unsuccessful Working for Me Now. The most important tune labeled Alesander and His Clarinet. event of i919, however, was the establishment