A biographical guide to the great jazz and pop singers

Review by New York Times Review

IN his sweeping new book on singers in America since the dawn of the electrical microphone in 1925, Will Friedwald functions as cicerone on a grand cultural journey. Roaming across the decades in A BIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO THE GREAT JAZZ AND POP SINGERS (Pantheon, $45) - he started out with David Thomson's "Biographical Dictionary of Film" as his model - he spins off intelligent portraits that begin alphabetically with Ernestine Anderson ("who is never less than subtle, whether belting the blues or tearing up a torch tune") and conclude on Page 539 as the curtain falls on Nancy Wilson. At that point, Friedwald shifts to a series of search-and-inform essays on assorted themes that crisscross generations, idioms, performing styles, record labels, the entertainment industry's evolution and a galaxy of careers, from Marlene Dietrich to Bob Dylan and Harry Connick Jr. Mahalia Jackson appears in a coda, as the author, wisely, genuflects to gospel music as a popular form. "Songs were the essential criteria by which artists were or were not included," says Friedwald, who writes about music for The Wall Street Journal. "My first consideration was to focus on those who primarily sang the American songbook." Defining the American songbook is about as easy as explaining democracy in a country where people wonder what voting actually means. Friedwald opines on hundreds of songs and singers without pinning himself down to the semantics of the proverbial songbook. Musicals constitute a major category: how songs of stage and screen found devotees in millions of people who never saw a Broadway show. Radio, film and television made singers famous. Bing Crosby and Billie Holiday receive the longest profiles, 13 pages each. But how does one account for Doris Day netting six pages, while Louis Armstrong gets only four? Fats Domino, whose honeyed Creole baritone set baby boomers dancing and sold 110 million records, is not profiled at all. Of the selection process on which he and his editor. Robert Gottlieb, settled, Friedwald says, "There simply wasn't room to write everything that needed to be said about every performer worth talking about." Getting the guilt off your chest is a smart move in a book like this. Friedwald is an elegant stylist whose passion for the music shimmers through the pages. Nat King Cole, he writes, "possessed an almost saintly charisma, which endeared him to the same listeners who were attracted to the touch of the rogue in Sinatra." You like Frank Sinatra? You'll get lots of Sinatra in this book. "He was able to put so much of himself into every performance, into every song, on every level; he simply covered more ground, both stylistically and philosophically, than anyone else," the author writes, and he's just warming up: "We envied his unending list of boudoir conquests, and even though we hardly approved of his consorting with notorious figures of the underworld, we still couldn't take our eyes off him. He was everything we wanted to be: swinging, romantic, erotic, melancholy and even a little bit dangerous." At times, Friedwald betrays a serrated edge. "You feel she's going to stalk you and cut your brake wires, put a snake in your boots, and rocks in your cornflakes," he writes of "Cry Me a River" as sung by Barbra Streisand. "This isn't a song about heartbreak and disillusion, this is a song about calling 911 and filing a restraining order." In fact, Friedwald has written a book about love, the songs and singers (Streisand included) who captured him in their world of enchantment. The surprise is that on Page 811, he stopped. - JASON BERRY

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 5, 2010]

---

Review by Booklist Review

The Great American Songbook can generally be defined as encompassing jazz, popular, and Hollywood or Broadway musical songs written between the 1930s and the 1960s (usually excluding folk, rock, and blues). Author Friedwald provides biographies of singers who have brought this music to life from the early days of the songbook until today. Friedwald's expertise in this area is evident looking at some of his other books: Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices from Bessie Smith to Bebop and Beyond (Da Capo, 1996) and Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer's Art (Da Capo, 1997). In this volume, he offers a casual writing style that drifts into humor and subjectivity at times. The entries are full of detail. More than 200 singers are featured, and for each the author discusses his or her musical background, albums, club performances, stage presence, and personal lives; and he sometimes muses about his own experience meeting them or hearing them sing live. This is a broad category of music, and the cross section of performers is equally diverse. Featured artists range from old-school crooners like Perry Como to so-called singing stars like Doris Day and rhythm-and-blues singers like Ray Charles. The book covers an expansive time period, but the primary focus is on singers born before 1930 who performed during the heyday of the songbook (roughly the 1940s through the 1960s). Short profiles of younger performers, for example, Michael Buble and Diana Krall, are included in separate thematic articles covering multiple artists. Many of the singers in this volume likely appear in other reference books, but the context Friedwald creates around the Great American Songbook, the inclusion of lesser-known singers, and the in-depth nature of the entries make this an interesting addition to collections in academic and large public libraries.--York, Steven Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this passionately opinionated encyclopedia of the old-school virtuosos of the American songbook, music writer Friedwald (Sinatra!) celebrates 200-odd performers of jazz and pop standards, from the mid-20th-century titans-Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra-to latter-day acolytes like Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr., with a raft of unjustly obscure singers in between. (Forget the Andrews Sisters-get a load of the Boswell Sisters!) Friedwald is all about the music; he primly shies away from his subjects' scandal-prone personal lives, but accords each a substantial career retrospective, selected discography and wonderfully pithy interpretive essay. His tastes are wide-ranging and idiosyncratic: he plumbs the artistry of Jimmy Durante's and Shirley Temple's novelty voices, decries the bombastic narcissism of "sacred monster" Barbra Streisand-"I remain completely unconvinced that she's a person who needs people"-and considers perky Doris Day's pop gems "the most erotic vocalizing you'll ever hear." However unconventional, his judgments are usually spot-on, as in his compelling reassessment of Elvis as the last great Crosbyesque crooner. Friedwald's exuberant medley is that rarest of things: music criticism that actually makes you sit up and listen. (Nov. 2) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

From Rosemary Clooney (1928--2002)    Both the Westbury and the Honolulu concerts were unbelievably moving, the first one especially so. A lot of us were aware, even if we didn't want to admit it, that this was going to be a farewell appearance, and we were also on edge because this was very shortly after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. Rosemary had been ending all her concerts that fall with "God Bless America," and, as she told me afterward, she had been inviting the audience to join her for the second chorus. In New York, however, no one waited; the crowd started singing along with her from the first note. Rosemary was visibly moved, as was everyone else. She obviously was thinking about that when she got to the conclusion of the Honolulu show. If you thought her version of "Brazil" was heartbreaking, you should hear what she does with "God Bless America"; if anything, it's even more amazing in that she reminds us that Irving Berlin's number is not an institution, not an anthem, but a song, to be interpreted and sung from the heart like any other. You feel, as always, as if she's singing about something that means everything to her. It doesn't matter whether it's a country, a child, a lover, or sweet Kentucky ham.   From Bing Crosby (1903--1977)   Another later album, Songs I Wish I Had Sung (The First Time Around) , was essentially Crosby's way of acknowledging that he wasn't the only male singer to create hits and standards. Longtime Decca associate Milt Gabler came up with the idea, and also that of using musical director Jack Pleis. Crosby offers "Thanks for the Memory" in recognition of the singing skills of Bob Hope and, ignoring the song's transformation into a Madison Avenue jingle, restores the bittersweet feeling Hope had projected when he introduced it in his movie debut, The Big Broadcast of 1938 . In lines like "no frills, no fuss--hooray for us," Crosby shows that he fully appreciates the song's melancholy ironies. However, in retrospect the album makes it plain that Crosby introduced more great songs into the cultural bloodstream than everybody else put together.    From Vic Damone (born 1928)     In one major respect, Damone, even more than Sinatra, was a perfect singer for the early postwar period: He was part of an era; Sinatra created one. Damone was much more likely to sing Italian songs, both traditional and contemporary, than Francis Albert, and Mercury producers Berle Adams and Mitch Miller gave him quite a few: "You're Breaking My Heart," "Just Say I Love Her," "Here in My Heart," "To Love You." The late forties and fifties were the international years of pop, in which songs from all over the globe landed on American charts. . . . In the second half of the nineties Damone reentered our consciousness on a significantly higher level. After a protracted absence from New York, he was suddenly appearing regularly at Carnegie Hall (both in various all-star tribute concerts and in a solo show) and at Rainbow and Stars. He was singing extraordinarily well, and not just for a man on the cusp of seventy--smooth and clear with a voice that had deepened, perhaps, but hadn't exactly darkened. The delivery was smooth and the pitch was effortless, as proved by a package of thirty standards that he recorded in 1996.    From Bobby Darin (1936--1973)    Darin's ongoing popularity might have surprised even him. In the twenty-first century, he is a disproportionately large influence, especially on such younger Italo-styled boy crooners as Tony DeSare, Peter Cincotti, and especially Michael Bublé. "Bobby didn't have Nat King Cole's voice and he di Excerpted from A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers by Will Friedwald All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---