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>> David Tangeman: Irving Berlin is one of
the popular composers in America,
and he wrote this song in 1929,
a pop song with complex evocative rhythms,
and he used it in a film
"Puttin' on the Ritz" in 1930.
The title was inspired by
the swanky Ritz hotel,
but the real inspiration
was when Berlin witnessed
the popular fad of well-dressed,
poor black Harlem residents
parading up and down Lenox Avenue.
And ain't it a fine thing when a man
and a woman, even a kid,
put’s-on and dawg’s-up, and we go out
with Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz."