Honoring Irving Berlin at Christmas …

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By CHIP DEFFAA

I was delighted that on Christmas Eve I was able to sing, once again, songs that Irving Berlin wrote, in front of his longtime home, with a great group of people from New York’s performing-arts community.

We’re carrying on a tradition that my late friend, cabaret singer/songwriter John Wallowitch started back in the 1980s when Berlin (1888-1989) was still living. Berlin was so touched by hearing people outside his front door singing “God Bless America,” “Always,” and “White Christmas” that he invited everyone into his home, served hot chocolate, and said “This is the best Christmas present anyone has ever given me.”

Berlin was famously reclusive in his later years; he made no public appearances; so Wallowitch felt it was especially meaningful that Berlin—wearing a monogrammed chocolate-brown robe–welcomed the carolers into his home that night. Wallowitch considered that experience one of the high points of his life. He felt (as many of us do) that Berlin was the greatest of all songwriters. He celebrated Berlin in cabaret shows of his own.

Berlin’s family arrived in New York—poor Russian immigrants fleeing the pograms—when he was just a boy. For the rest of his life, he lived in New York City.

The house that Berlin called home for the last 42 years of his life (17 Beekman Place, NYC) is today the Luxembourg Consulate. The nation of Luxembourg felt so honored by the fact that Berlin wrote a musical set in their country, “Call Me Madam,” they bought Berlin’s home—where he’d written “Call Me Madam”–after his passing. (Over the years–working in coordination with Ted Chapin, representing the Berlin estate–the consulate has presented a number of events honoring Berlin.) And this year, after we sang, Luxembourg Consul Jan Padjan invited all of the Berlin carolers inside, and offered us all champagne or soda. We toasted the memory of Berlin.

Jacqueline Parker, who was part of the original group and has led the caroling since John Wallowitch’s passing in 2007, gave everyone cookies she’d baked, (using a recipe that was Bing Crosby’s).

More than seven decades separated the senior-most member of this year’s group of carolers, Broadway legend Penny Fuller (whose musicals, since making her Broadway debut in 1962, have included “Cabaret,” “Applause,” “Rex,” “A New Brain,” “Sunday in the Park with George,” and “Anastasia”) and young singing actor Jesse Gellert (a student at the Professional Performing Arts School, most recently featured on my CD “Down in Honky Tonk Town”).

She was so kind to young Jesse, sharing invaluable insights she’s learned in an ongoing career that’s spanned more than six decades. I’ve always loved her work–and her versatility. Throughout her career, she’s moved easily from doing big Broadway musicals to dramas to Neil Simon comedies, to doing all sorts of television and film work (from “All the President’s Men,” to “Columbo,” to “The Beverly Hillbillies,” to “Law and Order.”)

Penny Fuller and young Jesse got on so very well! (I just listened, fascinated.) She shared with Jesse how–on the night she won her Emmy Award for “The Elephant Man”–she got to sing “God Bless America” with the artist who originally introduced it and made it famous, Kate Smith. She showed him how to put over a number stronger by making your gestures slightly precede the words they’re going with. He was getting a kind of master class. (And she’s still got the irresistible vivacity I’ve enjoyed in much of her stage work over the years.)

Most everyone in the group had some connection to the world of Irving Berlin.

Among others in the group: Jeff Harnar, one of the most respected of all cabaret singers, whose most recent Berlin recording is “Say it isn’t So” (accompanied by Alex Rybeck) on the album “Irving Berlin Love Songs and Such” (and personally, I think that’s the best recording of that song anyone has made in many years); noted music director/vocal coach Michael Lavine; theater teacher/performer/director Jonathan Gellert; Renee Katz, who’s recorded an album in tribute to Berlin, “Lost in his Arms”; George Calderaro, Director of the Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project, and more. I’ve written and directed several shows about Berlin, and have produced a dozen albums of his music. And, as I’ve acknowledged over the years, I have the late John Wallowitch to thank for nudging and prodding me, to do both!

There were people we would have loved to have had join us in caroling, but they were out of the area this year–like Keith Anderson, who’s not only recorded songs of both Irving Berlin and John Wallowitch, he’s actually portrayed John Wallowitch on stage.

This year, we sang three songs Wallowitch had everyone sing the first time, so many years ago: “God Bless America” (which Berlin, in effect, gave to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts–he arranged it so that all earnings from that song have gone to the Scouts, not to him or his estate); “Always” (for my money, as great a love song as anyone has written; Berlin gave that song to his wife as a wedding preset; he arranged it so that all earnings went to her, not to him); and “White Christmas.”

This year, we also sang Berlin’s “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sleep)”–the inspiration for which, Berlin said, came from a psychiatrist he’d consulted for his persistent insomnia.
It was a wonderful night. I’m very glad, and very grateful, that I was able to be there. And with such good company.

Jacqueline Parker and some members of the group further paid their respects to Berlin with a visit to his grave in Woodlawn Cemetery, earlier in the day. (And while there, they also paid visits to the graves of Dorothy Parker and Duke Ellington.)

Berlin wrote more hits and made more money than any of his contemporaries in what many felt was a Golden Age of America songwriting. He wrote the scores for 18 Broadway shows and 19 Hollywood musicals. Bing Crosby’s recording of Berlin’s “White Christmas” remains (according to the “Guinness Book of Records”) the best-selling single record in his history, having sold some 50 million copies.

Christmas-time was actually always a time of mourning, not joy, for Berlin, since his only son, Irving Berlin Jr., died as an infant on Christmas Day in 1928. But Berlin knew that “White Christmas” was as fine a song as any he’d ever written.