The Great American Songbook: Stories of the Standards [Paperback] Review

I was really disappointed with the book.I am an aspiring performer, and have been doing a lot of research on the standards.I thought this book would same me a lot of time. The great american songbook includes hundreds of standards -- this book covers only about 30 of them.You can get all of this information on the internet.Save the $9+.

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Product Description:
Intriguing, Inspiring and Entertaining Stories of the Songs, the Singers and the ComposersFrom Tin Pan Alley to Broadway and Hollywood, THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK: The Stories Behind the Standards tells the stories of our most popular songs with humor, drama and insight. This is timeless music written in unique ways that is constantly being reinterpreted by each generation. Isaac Stern made this distinction between talent and genius: "A person possesses talent; genius possesses the person." This is a book about singers, musicians, lyricists and composers taking their talent into the atmosphere of immortality. They are fascinating, and they set the standards by which popular music is measured. They may not have lived easy lives, but their creativity drove them to new heights and they changed the face of American music forever.
Music by a wide variety of artists is covered, including: George Gershwin, Billie Holiday, Cole Porter, Rogers & Hart, Paul McCartney, Dave Brubeck, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, John Coltrane and many others. Some chapters tell the story of just one song; others sketch the life stories of the artists. Music lovers will find new facts and deeper understanding about old friends in THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK The Stories Behind the Standards, and readers unfamiliar with the standards will find the book accessible, easy to read, and delightfully entertaining and informative.

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George Gershwin: A New Biography [Hardcover] Review

I ordered this book because I've always liked Gershwin's music & happened to catch the last part of the film Rhapsody in Blue on Turner Movie Classics recently. The book does an adequate job of covering Gershwin's composing career, and indeed most of the chapters are titled according to the major composition discussed. If one is looking for in-depth information about Gershwin himself, his relationships, his family & his interests & activities outside music, the book is less satisfying. For example, one might assume from reading this book that his younger brother Arthur died in infancy as he is not mentioned except for his birthdate. Arthur actually lived to an old age, married, had kids & composed music himself. What relationship he & George had is unknown. Similarly, while Ira's wife Leonore had a part in George's life, she appears haphazardly throughout the book and little about her relationship with George is explored. George was also a painter but that is only tangentially mentioned. There is so much more that could fill out a broader, more in-depth picture of Gershwin. One could also wish for better editing to remove grammar errors & smooth out the repetitious use of some phrases as well as the jerky transitions from one subject to the next. The author's extensive research is evident & the endnotes at each chapter useful. For someone interested in Gershwin's growth as a composer, the book does a creditable job of documenting the major compositions & music events in the composer's life. For more about the man himself, readers must look elsewhere.

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After the Ball: Pop Music from Rag to Rock (Limelight) [Paperback] Review

That's how Ian Whitcomb unabashedly comments on his own writing in the afterword to the 2nd edition.The fact that it went into a second edition (1994, the 1st was in 1972) is in itself a plug for the books' worth.

"After the Ball" is the title of one of those evergreen songs many of us somehow know about, even in the age of hip-hop,though few of us have ever heard the song.Whitcomb takes this 1892 ballad and how it set the stage for what we understand as "popular music" and "hit song"as the starting point to trace the social and musical machinery that has been grinding out pop hits ever since.Though music has always been part ouf our culture, there were not always "smash hits" and "pop songs" as we understand them today: music created and sold especially to be million sellers with broad appeal.How did music get to this place? Where does that music come from?

There is a fascinating line to trace from the sentimental ballads of the parlor, through rag-time and race music right up to rock and roll."After the Ball" is not a scholarly study of that line. It's a well informed, loving backward glance.

The move from sheet music to recording. From the parlor to the street.The influence of the two great wars. Rag-time. Jazz (such scary music).Tin-Pan Alley (ever wonder just what that was? Find out here.). Hillbilly.All the threads tie together.Whitcomb uses some individuals to bring home the story and bring the book down to earth:WH.Handy's experience with racism; Jolson and the popularizing and melding of Vaudeville and minstrelsy; Kern and the rise of the jewels of broadway;the fall of the Alle; Allen Freed and rock `n roll; Elvis to the Beatles. To his credit, although he treats each thread in turn, Whitcomb never looses sight of the fact that none of those threads developed independently. By the time we get to rock, we find that the ghosts of the past are still with us.

If you've read a little of the history, you don't need to be told again about the effects of the strike against radio and how it affected the big bands and some of the broad facts.Whitcomb touches on those high points but paints a broader, more colorful picture and comes up with some interesting facts and explanations along the way.The impact of the war between BMI and ASCAPP and how it contributed to the rise of post-war, independent artists and labels.How the Alley model of writing songs and then plugging them gave way to producers creating and selling packaged music.

The rattling good read comes with Ian Whitcomb's style.He has a pretty cleaver way with a phrase. He can be downright arch (which must annoy some readers).Occasionally the story seems jumbled but that is because he is not isolating the story to one thread.It's not just "first it was rag-time and then came jazz".All these ingredients were bubbling in the same pot.Keep your eye on the larger phenomenon and the threads become clear.

There are occasionally lulls in the narrative and occasional reminiscences (rare actually, until the end where he appends a hilarious recounting of his rise to one-hit-wonderhood in the early 60's) It's alot of history to pack into a couple hundred pages, so yes some stuff is glossed. There are a couple chapters devoted to happenings in England, territory he knows well, that could be a distraction, but they fill a gap too often ignored when looking at American pop.

Though it is not a recent book, it does not come off as dated.Whitcomb has obvously done some home work and though the book does not have a scholarly tone, I could wish at times he would include some scholarly apparatus.I trust the author, but I'd like to check some of those facts and to know the sources.A bibliography would have been valuable.I suppose Evan Eisenberg's "The Recording Angel" fills the pop/scholarly bill. AndKen Emerson's marvelous "Always Magic in the Air" fill in some of the details of 50's-60's pop music history.

So if you are even remotely curious about the pre-history of rock or especially interested in the history of popular music; if you like a little humor with your scholarship, or a little scholarship with your humor, then "After the Ball" will be a rattling good read.

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Product Description:
An irreverent and engaging chronicle of popular music dating from the 1880s, when Tin Pan Alley was founded, to the present by a British-born songwriter and onetime pop star. "Brash, learned, funny, and perspicacious." - The New Yorker

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Stardust Melodies [Hardcover] Review

Did you know that Evelyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond and a backer of the production of 'Show Boat', was so aghast when its creators wanted to take 'Ol' Man River' out of the show during out-of-town tryouts that she bet them the Diamond that it would be the hit of the show? She didn't have to give up her gem, and this gem of a song was saved. Did you know that Stan Freberg recorded his own politically correct version of the song, retitling it 'Elderly Man River'? Or did you know that Herman Hupfeld, the writer of both the words and music for 'As Time Goes By' had only one other hit in his long career, and that was 'When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba'?
This book is not just a collection of trivia about twelve popular American songs, but it is filled with such oddball facts as these. Will Friedwald starts each chapter with the story of how the song came to be writen, gives a neat analysis of the technical details of the song, and then describes the major recorded versions of each song. This is indeed a treasure trove of information about these songs, and if nothing else, reminds us of the long and rich history of American popular song.
The twelve songs, each with its own chapter, are, in chronological order, 'Star Dust', 'The St. Louis Blues', 'Mack the Knife', 'Ol' Man River', 'Body and Soul', 'I Got Rhythm', 'As Time Goes By', 'Night and Day', 'Stormy Weather', 'Summertime', 'My Funny Valentine', and 'Lush Life.'

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The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty [Paperback] Review

This is a book about the composers of America's most popular popular music, the music that came into being from roughly 1920 to 1950. It is not a formal treatise or scholarly study but rather a kind of fan's notes ramble, an enthusiastic exuberant high- spirited riff. English- born novelist, essayist Sheed shows great love for , and tremendous knowledge of American popular song. He writes with worshipful insight of the two greatest of the founding fathers of this particular American genre, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. Both of these children of Russian Jewish parents found in black Blues and American jazz a fundamental inspiration. Both inspired many others and Gershwin particularly was a magnanimous helpful friend to other composers. Sheed cares for the Music above all and gives preeminence to those who create it - the lyrics are significant but secondary. Sheed writes not only about the major figures, Kern, Berlin, Gershwin, Cole Porter but also about fifty others. One special one for him is someone he knew personally , Harry Warren. Warren the composer of "I only have eyes for you' was a modest figure in the background but for Sheed a friend and great composer to whom he dedicates the book.
All the readers of this book I know of have spoken of whatgreat pleasure they had in reading it. The songs of these great composers entered Sheed's heart and his writing is his song of appreciation back to them.

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