Winning Words 9/17/09
“Life is 10% what you make it and 90% how you take it.” (Irving Berlin) Life wasn’t always easy for Israel Baline, but he was able to make a success of it and write songs like, Blue Skies, Count You Blessings Instead Of Sheep and I Can Always Find A Little Sunshine. Do you have a favorite Berlin song? ;-) Jack

FROM SH IN MICHIGAN: How Deep is the Ocean Did he write "Mammy"? Like that one too.
FROM JACK: THE SONG, MAMMY
Written in 1932, this song has roots dating back to the 1930 Al Jolson film Mammy, for which Berlin composed a number entitled "To My Mammy." While he considered it one of his weakest efforts, he was impressed by some of the lyrics he wrote for it. He extracted several of its lines and used them as a springboard for this song, "How Deep is the Ocean?" He also derived some of the opening verse from his 1930 song "How Much I Love You." The music to "How Deep is the Ocean?," of course, was new and quite inspired. It has a generally subdued character, but is still quite passionate in its outpourings about love. Not surprisingly, it is the refrain that contains the most famous music. When it comes, with its famous third and fourth lines -- "How Deep is the ocean? How high is the sky?" -- the song's romantic character takes on a sense of yearning, a sense of passion. Berlin fashions one of his loveliest melodies here and matches it with touching lyrics: when the familiar lines above reappear in the song, they are preceded by the words: "And if I ever lost you -- How much would I cry?" Here the music soars almost to the heavens and then the song quietly ends. ~ All Music Guide

FROM MT IN PENNSYLVANIA: This observations is one of my all-time favorites -- but I never knew the source, until now. Thanks, Jack!

FROM PRJS IN MICHIGAN: "White Christmas" FROM JACK: I read that the morning after he wrote the song — Berlin usually stayed up all night writing — the songwriter went to his office and told his musical secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — hell, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!"

FROM EMT SINGS IN MICHIGAN: Did't he write God Bless America? If he did that would be my favorite!
FROM JACK: From what I've read, Berlin originally wrote the song in 1918 while serving in the U.S. Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York, but decided that it did not fit in a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside. The lyrics at that time included the line, "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America.." as well as "Stand beside her and guide her, to the right with the light from above." Music critic Jody Rosen comments that a 1906 Jewish dialect novelty song, "When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band", contains a six-note fragment that is "instantly recognizable as the opening strains of "God Bless America"". He interprets this as an example of Berlin's "habit of interpolating bits of half-remembered songs into his own numbers

FROM MOLINER CF: Edelweiss FROM JACK: Oops! Sorry! That song is from The Sound of Music and was the last one written by Rogers and Hammerstein. There's a table prayer that uses the tune, but it can't be printed, because it's copyrighted.

FROM BD IN MICHIGAN: I've been using the attached by Charles Swindoll for 20 years with my employee's, it works.
ATTITUDE by: Charles Swindoll
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes.