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Title: Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs by William Zinsser ISBN: 1-56792-147-7 Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Charming
Comment: This book is an eccentric, highly personal appreciation of "The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs." It is an easy read, as it is composed of short chapters with titles such as "George and Ira Gershwin," "Anatomy of the Popular Song," "Sheet Music, "Writing for Fred Astaire," and "Made in Hollywood: 'As Time Goes By' and 'Laura'." I found it extremely informative and charmingly written. The lists at the back are fun and provocative. Zinsser provides extensive (and entertaining) notes on his sources as well as a thorough index. This is a very subjective book with a highly personal viewpoint, but I would nonetheless recommend it to anyone with an interest in American popular song. I enjoyed this book a lot.
Rating: 5
Summary: Can I give it a "6"?
Comment: What a wonderful book! This is a book I wish I had written, if only to write the sentence "Seeing Guys and Dolls on opening night in 1950 was my nirvana as a musical comedy fan"! It's one long love letter to the great American songwriters, both composers and lyricists: the oft-written about Kern, Hammerstein, Berlin, the Gershwins, Porter, Arlen, Sondheim, Lerner, Loewe, Ellington, Rodgers and Hart, and the less-written about Dorothy Fields, Harburg, Youmans, Schwartz, Dietz, Warren, Weill, Styne, Comden/Green, Loesser, Cahn, Van Heusen, Kander, Ebb, Bock & Harnick. Though Zinsser is a pianist himself, he keeps the technical discussion to a minimum. He's dug up photographs I've never seen before: Frank Loesser sweating on a New York park bench; Barbra sitting on Jule Styne's lap; Johnny Mercer recording (I didn't know he was popular singer as well as gifted lyricist.) And the sheet music! He's included b&w pictures of dozens of vintage sheet music cover art: the Art Deco "Roberta"; "Just in Time" with '50's linear design motifs; a Toulouse-Lautrec knockoff for a '20's Rodgers and Hart song. Zinsser very interestingly keeps the biographical info to a bare minimum, concentrating on the melodic structure of the tune, the "rules" of song structure and how the rules were effectively broken; and the lyrics which are central to his appreciation of a song. He has lovingly captured an era I was born too late for but which lives on.
Rating: 5
Summary: A loving look at a lost world
Comment: William Zinsser's survey of the American popular song is an exceptional work, it revists and evokes the lost world of the popular song - when songs bridged generations and spoke of love and loss with grace, joy, sorrow, and occassionally, grandeur.
Not only does Zinsser give us the lives of the composers and lyricists examined, but he places their work in the context of its time, and for those who lived through the great age of American songwriting, he recreates the meaning of that music to Americans, and for those unlucky enough to be born later, he offers a guide to its many delights and pleasures. A winner of a book on every level. A must read for anyone who loves American popular music pre 1960.
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Title: Reading Lyrics by Robert Kimball, Robert Gottlieb ISBN: 0375400818 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $39.50 |
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Title: American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 by Alec Wilder ISBN: 0195014456 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Listening to Classic American Popular Songs by Allen Forte, Richard Lalli, Gary Chapman ISBN: 0300083386 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists (Oxford Paperbacks) by Philip Furia ISBN: 0195074734 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1992 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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Title: Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer by Philip Furia ISBN: 0312287208 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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