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Title: The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists by Philip Furia ISBN: 0-19-506408-9 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 1990 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent overview
Comment: This is an excellent book. Furia provides a fine overview with lyric analyses of all the major lyricists of the first half of the 20th Century. He also touches upon the history of Tin Pan Alley itself and other developments that were happening at the same time in music, like the rise of the film studios, the creation of ASCAP and BMI, and the "race" and "hillbilly" recordings which helped bring about the end of Tin Pan Alley dominance. Furia later wrote full biographies of Ira Gershwin and Johnny Mercer that are more complete. (He would do the world a great service if he would write a decent book on Dorothy Fields.) THE POETS OF TIN PAN ALLEY is highly recommended for all lyricists and anyone who has in interest in American popular song.
Rating: 4
Summary: O.K. for dipping.
Comment: I have to wonder if the impressive endorsements on the back cover (by Sammy Cahn, Steve Allen, Michael Feinstein) are from musical celebrities who actually read the book. The author deserves praise for bringing concentrated focus to and careful analysis of the lyrics of America's best wordsmiths, but this is not a book that seduces the reader into staying with it for extended stretches. There's historical context, learned analysis of prosody with lots of concise examples, and pithy scholarly prose. But when all is said and done, the chapters devoted to individual lyricists, as well as the book as a whole, are quite bloodless. I don't sense any clear thesis, any driving passion, even any strong personal preferences from the author.
The author's justification for such a book--that composers of melody are given credit at the expense of the lyricist--strikes me as a bit of a straw man. How many listeners can immediately associate a familiar popular standard with either its composer or lyricist? Also, the analysis of prosody and technique often overshadows consideration of the thematic integrity, or meaning, of a song. Moreover, the analyses pay too little heed to melody and harmony to make a persuasive case for the poetic power of the lyrics themselves. Finally, with song lyrics how can you separate the dancer from the dance? Were it not for Billie Holiday, Mabel Mercer and, above all, Frank Sinatra, most of these songs would be long forgotten. Certainly some consideration of the actual performance of the lyrics would seem requisite to any demonstration of their continuing vitality and importance.
Most of the above challenges are met by a book to which the author frequently alludes--Gerald Mast's "Can't Help Singin'." Any reader interested in the art and lives of the composers and the songs, not to mention the lyricists and lyrics, cannot afford to pass by Mast's singular achievement. In the neglected, taken-for-granted field of the American popular song, it remains the one "must read."
Rating: 5
Summary: Issue a new printing
Comment: I erroneously entered this as an author's review. I thought I was communicating with the author. Please delete what I erroneously submitted, and accept it as a customer's review.
I would like to have several compies of this book available. I am thinking of putting on an adult education course with this book as the principal text.
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Title: Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs by William Knowlton Zinsser ISBN: 1567921477 Publisher: David R Godine Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 by Alec Wilder, James T. Maher, Graham Lees ISBN: 0195014456 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist by Philip Fura, Philip Furia ISBN: 0195115708 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Reading Lyrics : More Than 1,000 of the Century's Finest Lyrics--a Celebration of Our GreatestSongwriters, a Rediscovery of Forgotten Masters, and an Appreciation of an by Robert Kimball, Robert Gottlieb ISBN: 0375400818 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 21 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $39.50 |
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Title: Listening to Classic American Popular Songs by Allen Forte, Richard Lalli, Gary Chapman ISBN: 0300083386 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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