The great ragtime pianist and theatre composer Eubie Blake told Robert Kimball in the late 1960s that “I helped make it popular in Atlantic City that summer when I played at the Boat House. Throughout the summer and fall and beyond, “Alexander” became an increasingly huge sensation. The Merry Whirl ran until mid-August and then toured. ![]() Miss Vincent’s photograph appears on some of the early sheet music covers of the song, as do photographs of, among others, Carl Cook, Belle Dixon, Mae Maxfield, and a woman billed simply as “Priscilla.” The next important date in the song’s early history is May 28, 1911, when Berlin and Harry Williams offered it in the Friars Frolic of 1911 at New York’s New Amsterdam Theatre and during a subsequent two-week tour of eastern American cities that culminated with a return presentation at the New Amsterdam on June 8, 1911.Īs Berlin recalled his Friars rendition with Williams, for New York Daily News writer Danton Walker (July 29, 1938), “We sang, did a little dance and went off with a cartwheel.” Four days after the Friars tour ended, “Alexander” was offered at the Columbia Theatre, New York, as part of the burlesque entertainment The Merry Whirl, where it was sung by James C. Among them were Neil McKinley (who may have been the second to sing it in New York), Eddie Miller, Adele Oswald, and Helen Vincent. ![]() Many of the original sheet music covers state that it was “successfully intruduced by Emma Carus.” Other vaudevillians quickly included the song in their acts. A week later she performed it in New York, and subsequently in other cities. According to Berlin scholar Charles Hamm, “Alexander” was probably given its first public performance by Emma Carus on April 17, 1911, when she began a week’s engagement as headliner of the Big Easter Vaudeville Carnival at Chicago’s American Music Hall. It is possible that the first public performance of “Alexander” took place in mid-April, possibly on April 15, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, when comedian Otis Harlan interpolated a whistled version of it into a performance of Hell, a segment of a three-part entertainment that later was presented in New York beginning April 27, 1911, at the Folies Bergere dinner theatre. The exact date of the trip to Palm Beach is unknown, but it almost certainly occurred during the winter of 1911. Largely for the lack of anything better with which to kill time, he sat at the piano and completed the song. Among his papers he found a memorandum referring to “Alexander,” and after considerable reflection he recalled its strains. Just before train time he went to his offices to look over his manuscripts, in order to leave the best of them for publication during his absence. He might never have completed the song had it not been for a trip to Palm Beach, Florida, which months later he arranged to take with Jean Schwartz and Jack M. ![]() In fact, after playing it over a few times on the piano, he did not take the trouble to note the melody on paper. As Wolf described it, “the greater portion of the song was written in ten minutes, and in the offices of the music publishing firm, Waterson, Berlin and Snyder (then known as Ted Snyder Co., Inc.), while five or six pianos and as many vocalists were making bedlam with songs of the day.” Wolf continued: Berlin was not impressed by it when the melody first came to him.
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