You can sing along with the bouncing ball and Fleischer animation depicting passengers boarding a train, including one late arrival who, magically, opens the conductor as if he were a door! Learn more about Max and Dave Fleischer, Fleischer Studios, and the early days of animation at http://www.fleischerstudios.com/
âIrving Berlin has no place in American music – he is American musicâ
â Jerome Kern
in 1911, Berlin hit upon the musical composition that catapulted him into legend: âAlexanderâs Ragtime Band.â A jaunty tip of the hat to the ragtime craze (although not technically of the ragtime genre) the song reached the larger public in several stages: first as a vaudeville number premiered in Chicago by Emma Carus; then as a performance by Berlin at the Friars Frolic of 1911; then increasingly âcoveredâ by performers in vaudeville and early gramophone recordings. It set a new record by becoming the fastest selling song of its time, moving a million copies of sheet music within four months; by 1912, âAlexanderâs Ragtime Bandâ had sold over two million copies of sheet music and subsequently a million more.  It was the most ubiquitous song of its era and had become a cornerstone of the music publishing industry.
