The 45-Year Hit Machine

Spend a few moments scanning a list of Irving Berlin’s most popular songs, and three things become quickly apparent: the sheer volume of his output, the magnitude of those hits and the unparalleled longevity of his career.

Of Berlin’s “Hot 100” hits, 25 reached No. 1 on the weekly pop charts, according to “Joel Whitburn’s Pop Memories 1890-1954.” And three of those songs rank among the longest-running No. 1 hits in pop history. Bing Crosby’s recording of “White Christmas” topped the chart for 14 weeks in the 1940s, Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek” was No. 1 for 11 weeks in 1935, and Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” was on top for 10 weeks in 1911.

Incredibly, Berlin turned out Top 5 hits for more than 45 years. He landed his first Top 5 tune in 1909 with “My Wife’s Gone to the Country (Hurrah! Hurrah!),” and his last in 1954 with “Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep),” an Oscar-nominated song from the movie “White Christmas.”

And Berlin’s old songs are still revived periodically. “Puttin’ on the Ritz” was a Top 5 smash for a Dutch singer named Taco in 1983, more than 50 years after it was introduced by Harry Richman in the 1930 film of the same name.

Cover versions of Berlin classics have appeared on two multi-platinum albums in the past decade. Linda Ronstadt included “What’ll I Do” on her smash 1983 album “What’s New,” and Willie Nelson featured “Blue Skies” on his 1978 LP “Stardust.”

ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) included two Berlin classics--”White Christmas” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business”--in its latest recap of the most performed “standards” in its repertoire over the past decade.

All of Berlin’s hits were released prior to the inception in 1958 of the Grammy Awards. But two of them have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which was inaugurated in 1974 to honor pre-1958 recordings. Crosby’s “White Christmas” was one of the original five inductees; Kate Smith’s “God Bless America” was added in 1982.

“White Christmas” is easily Berlin’s all-time biggest hit. In fact, Crosby’s recording of the song on Decca is generally acknowledged as the best-selling single in pop history, with worldwide sales estimated at 30 million.

“White Christmas” was introduced in the 1942 movie “Holiday Inn,” and brought Berlin his only Academy Award. Crosby’s bittersweet recording of the song was No. 1 for 11 weeks that year, and returned to No. 1 in 1945 and 1946. This evergreen is one of the most frequently recorded songs in pop history, as are three other Berlin classics: “Blue Skies,” “Always” and “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”

Berlin wrote “God Bless America” for the 1918 soldier revue “Yip, Yip, Yaphank,” but deleted it from the show and shelved it until 1938, when he gave it to Kate Smith. Her stirring version of the song cracked the Top 10 in 1939, and was a hit twice more in the early ‘40s.

In addition to his dozens of hits as a songwriter, Berlin recorded one hit as an artist. In 1910, at the age of 22, he cracked the Top 10 with the novelty song, “Oh, How That German Could Love.”

Many of Berlin’s most successful songs originated in popular movies. “Cheek to Cheek” was one of five Top 10 hits to emerge from the Astaire and Ginger Rogers classic, “Top Hat.” Astaire’s recording of the Oscar-nominated song was the biggest hit of the ‘30s.

In 1968, Berlin received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. The award cited “his more than a half century of composing songs so seemingly simple and yet filled with so much warmth and musicality and love.”