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Irving Berlin's 1911 hit Alexander's Ragtime Band made him the King of Ragtime, but Berlin would take on other crowns during the course of his life of 101 years - with triumphs on Broadway and in Hollywood. Music was very much a means of survival for Berlin from an early age. He had arrived aged 5 in the new immigrant-processing facility on Ellis Island in 1893, fleeing with his family from the pogroms of Tsarist Russia. They lived in a crowded tenement on disreputable Cherry Street in the Lower East Side of New York, an area which was one of the most crowded in the city and in effect a Jewish ghetto. Having to leave home at 14, Berlin, whose father had been a cantor in the synagogue, found work singing, in his raspy tenor voice, entertaining the customers in seamy bars and saloons. In these tough surroundings he quickly learned that simple, well-known tunes were the most reliable. He had no formal musical training of any kind, so had great appeal as a musical "man of the people", playing up to this image, and parading his musical ignorance. He would often say that the only reason he was in the music business was to make money. Donald Macleod explores the early life and work of a composer whose career spanned Dvorak to the Beatles.