2 American Music Idols

J.P. "The March King" Sousa and Irving "I Used To Be Israel" Berlin each rose from obscurity to become one of the world's most celebrated musicians. Grateful, each gave something back: music that helps define the USA to this day.

John Philip Sousa's parents were both immigrants--his father from Portugal, and his mother from Bavaria (in modern-day Germany). But Sousa, born in Washington, DC, in 1854, had nothing but music in his blood.

Irving Berlin's life reads even more like a Hollywood screenplay. He was born Israel Baline on May 11, 1888, in Temum, Siberia, the son of a Jewish cantor. Fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia, his family emigrated to the United States and settled in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side.

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