Berlin–Midnight Choo-Choo youtube

As long as we are in the discussion of second chances, Irving Berlin had a bunch of tunes that he had written in the early years, between 1911 and 1915, all of which had sold a good amount of sheet music in their day. However, their day didn’t last all that long and, once the days of vaudeville had passed, movies came along. We are fortunate that some of those movies memorialized the old vaudeville tunes on film. One such movie was For Me and My Gal, starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.

Irving Berlin thought of a way to bring some of his older songs back to life; yesterday, we saw what a new lyric could do for the song “Easter Parade.” However, for the songs we are about to cover, Berlin didn’t need to change the lyrics. They fit in perfectly with the vaudeville routines that were created for Judy and Fred Astaire.

In one sequence, Judy and Fred sang and danced to a medley of songs: “I Love a Piano” (1915), “Snookey Ookums” (1913), “Ragtime Violin” (1911) and “When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabama’ ” (1912).

It is quite a show.