 |  |  | | Mostly sentimental or dramatic songs were written about Jews, but occasionally a humorous one was composed, such as the 1881 Dot Beautiful Hebrew Girl. The music was written by George Schleiffarth and the words by Harry G. Neeler, both Gentiles | One of the most prolific Jewish composers of the 1880s and 1890s was Monroe H. Rosenfeld, described as a “melodic kleptomaniac.” Possibly the most notable of his songs was a melodramatic number, written in 1897, entitled Take Back Your Gold. The title page indicates that the words were written by Louis W. Pritzkow, a popular minstrel; however, Rosenfeld wrote the words himself, and a column in the New York Herald gave his friend Pritzkow credit. | Composer Charles K. Harris, at one time a bellhop then a pawnbroker, began writing music in 1891. A year later he composed the greatest success of his life, After the Ball. His song, Break the News to Mother, was sung by all of America during the Spanish-American War. His sad ballads include Hello Central, Give Me Heaven, in which a little child tries to reach her late father over the telephone; Always In the Way, about a neglected child; and The Rabbi’s Daughter," an 1899 sad story.
|  |  |  | | Irving Berlin, considered by many the greatest Jewish popular music composer, was born Isadore Baline in Russia. He came to America in the early 1890s and wrote his first popular song in 1907 as a 16-year-old waiter in a saloon. Two years after his first song, Marie, from Sunny Italy, he began to write humorous songs about his fellow American Jews, such as Yiddle on Your Fiddle, Play Some Ragtime. Before he finished his writing career, he had turned out over 600 popular songs, including such hits as Alexander’s Ragtime Band, O, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning, Easter Parade, and God Bless America. | Several thousand Yiddish songs, many from the Yiddish theater, were published in America, and many cannot be sung in English. “Der Nasen Keiver,” which means “The Wet Grave,” was a song published in 1912 about the Titanic’s Disaster. Among the passengers on that ship were Isidor and Ida Straus, a Jewish couple and members of the family that owned Macy’s department store. When the captain ordered all women and children off the ship first, Mrs. Straus refused to leave her husband, and so both were lost. Solomon Small wrote the words of the song, dedicated to the memory of the Strauses, and Henry A. Russotto arranged the music for piano.
| After Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, aviator Clarence Chamberlain attempted to best him. Chamberlain was backed by Jewish manufacturer Charles Levine, who jumped into Chamberlain’s plane as it was about to take off from New York to Europe. For forty hours no one knew what had happened to them. Finally Germany reported that the plane had landed a few miles short of Berlin, and Chamberlin had established a distance record that would last for a number of years. New York publisher and songwriter Gus Goldstein immediately wrote and published a song entitled Levine, Levine, Der Yid Mit Zein Machine. |
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