Berlin’s tunes beckon listeners to spring
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By TOM CHISHOLM
Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:04 AM CDT
For the Herald
The persistent cold and snow of early March and the last few weeks of Lent were warmed on a recent Sunday by a mixture of barber shop songs, jump rope champions and belly dancers.
No, they were not from the mysterious East but from our own Chippewa Valley.
If Vaudeville on March 9 was not enough to lighten hearts after a long winter, you should have observed Tuesday of Holy Week with the compositions of Irving Berlin at the former McDonell High School.
These rather morbid years of the 21st century were retraced by seven professionals playing, singing and dancing 63 of Berlin’s more than 1,200 tunes composed during his 101 happy years, from the late 19th to the last decade of the 20th century.
To an eager crowd of alums of both local schools grateful to A.B. McDonell — including gentleman Joe Joas and a few current teenagers — Tin Pan Alley came to life on the century old stage with memories of East Side Manhattan and the musicals we saw at the Rivoli, Falls Theater or the drive-ins long since replaced by TV and home movies.
Opening and closing with the spotlight on the grand rather than an upright piano, the essential prop of the darkened stage, the pianist teased the high notes before playing “I Love a Piano,” the central theme of the production.
Then, six talented singers and dancers — three men and three lovely women — in the styles of the Gilded Age swept in under the bright lights of the present.
“A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody” might recall burlesque for some but “Always” surely recalls a special memory for many. Most of the songs were ragtime arrangements including “Alexanders Ragtime Band,” a song eternally associated with Speakeasys, Flappers and Israel Beilin.
Changing into a multitude of costumes, the sextet sang and danced well-remembered tunes from Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, and the Depression, including “Blue Skies,” a song for our spirits these somber days.
The first set was finished with a romp through WWII songs from the musical “Stage Door Canteen,” including “This Is the Army,” “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning!” and “Sadie Salome Go Home.”
Kate Smith introduced the song “God Bless America,” on Armistice day 1938. Her lookalike sang it to the Heyde Center crowd on Tuesday.
Berlin composed so many great songs, right down to the lyrics. It was amazing that the cast of “I Love a Piano” could recall every word and never miss one step of the carefully crafted choreography as essential to the performance as the music.
There is “No Business Like Show Business,” and we have the proof right here in our old home town of Chippewa Falls. From “Cheek to Cheek” to “Easter Parade,” “Falling in Love is Wonderful,” and if singing is better than vitamins and exercise, living fully to one hundred will be fantastic even as we pause for Passover and The Passion.
Tom Chisholm of Chippewa Falls is a patron of the Heyde Center for the Arts.
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