Broadway Magazine: 'Tin Pan Alley Rage: Irving Berlin Plagiarist?'

[Photo from Roundabout’s Tin Pan Alley Rag by Joan Marcus.]

Broadway.tv/blog
“Tin Pan Alley Rage: Irving Berlin Plagiarist?
BROADWAY MAGAZINE—The new offering from Roundabout Theatre is Mark Saltzman’s Tin Pan Alley Rag, featuring the music and characters of Irving Berlin and Scott Joplin. The two men are unquestionably saints in the cannon of American popular music. However, there is more than a little suggestion that Mr. Berlin may have also been a bit of a sinner too. In Charles Hamm’s book, Irving Berlin Songs Of The Melting Pot: The Formative Years, it is put forward that Irving Berlin was accused of plagiarizing 'Alexander’s Ragtime Band' from Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha. Quoting Joplin’s widow from Hamm’s book: 'after Scott had finished writing [Treemonisha], and while he was showing it around, hoping to get it published, someone stole the theme, and made it into a popular song. The number was quite a hit, too, but that didn’t do Scott any good.'”

“The suggestion that Berlin plagiarized Alexander’s Ragtime Band is not a new one. In Edward Berlin’s book King of Ragtime: Scott Joplin and His Era, it is pointed out that as early as 1911, there were reports that Joplin was angry with Irving Berlin. By 1916, Berlin came out publically and addressed rumors around the song, though he didn’t address the Joplin connection directly. Hmmm. Come on and steal, come on and steal Alexander’s Ragtime Band?! [Full Post] [Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was a Ragtime and Classical composer and pianist of African descent who is profiled at AfriClassical.com]