Irving Berlin started making music long before he learned to play an instrument. Before rising to the heights of superstardom, Irving (then Israel Beilin) was just another son of an immigrant in the United States. Through stubborn determination to express his music, Irving eventually taught himself to play the piano and became one of the most prolific composers in music history.

Irving’s parents were poor, and after his father died, he found himself eking a living as a singing waiter in New York. He was already using music as a medium of expression, but it was when he was asked to write something catchy for a local business that he found his true passion. He also found himself with a new name – a misprint read “Berlin” instead of “Beilin” on the sheet music, and so he became I. Berlin.

Coming up with the music was easy enough, but arranging it professionally was a challenge. In the early days when he worked alone, he employed outside help to arrange his musical ideas. His work as a lyricist proved successful and soon he was composing songs for modest stage productions.

It was a decent step up from warbling for cafe patrons, but his life changed in 1911 when his song “Alexander’s Rag-time Band” hit the big time. It was an ode to the explosion of jazz in the early twentieth century.

After Alexander’s Rag-time Band, Berlin was catapulted into the limelight as a songwriting star. He turned his attention to writing songs for full length musicals, and during a stint with the American army in World War One, he penned what became one of the most stirring American anthems in the country’s history. “God Bless America” is Berlin’s most popular and widely-known song, second only to the American National Anthem in popularity.

Although he wrote music for many plays, his best known composition was Annie Get Your Gun.  He also had great success in films. White Christmas was sung by Bing Crosby in a movie called Holiday Inn, and the response was tremendous. The song won Berlin an Oscar, and he was the first and only winner to ever find his own name in the envelope.

Berlin was also a keen businessman. He built his own Broadway theater called the Music Box. He also established the American Society of Composer, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) for creative minds in the industry. He also donated a great deal of his earnings to charity, most of it towards organizations assisting the army. President Eisenhower (for whom Berlin wrote the presidential candidacy song “I Like Ike”) awarded him a Congressional Medal in 1955 for God Bless America.

Although Berlin enjoyed international success for his work, his personal life was sometimes fraught with tragedy. His first wife died only five months after they were married. Expressing his grief in his own way, he wrote “When I Lost You” as a tribute to her. Later he remarried a young socialite named Ellin Mackay. Her father condemned the union and disinherited her from his mining fortune. Berlin fathered three daughters with Ellin. The youngest son died as a baby.

One of the most repeated quotes about Irving Berlin was first uttered by his composer friend Jerome Kern. He stated, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music.” Despite having foreign roots, Berlin was fiercely patriotic. He loved America and thought of it as his own country.

Irving Berlin was 101 when he died in 1989.