Customer Reviews

America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This delightful and informative book caught my eye when I noticed that the much-esteemed songwriter,Ray Evans, wrote a blurb on the back. The book is arranged chronologically, and gives fascinating glimpses into what lead to the creation of many fantastic songs, and also explains what makes these great songs great. To me, the star of the book is Irving Berlin, who really had an incredible genius for songwriting. The clever crafting of Berlin's lyrics hadn't been adequately appreciated by me, until that exciting book showed me the craft and the art which Berlin applied to his songs. Not that other greats are glossed over, Furia and Lasser really give a wonderfully expansive collection of (mostly) fellas, who made American music what is was, and influenced what it is. Highly recommended for those who love, theatre and music.

There was a lot of great info in this book, especially covering songs from the first half of the 20th century. But there were also some annoying errors and omissions. Among the errors: a photo of the original star of Cabaret (Jill Haworth) is labeled as Jan Clayton (who was the original star of Carousel several decades earlier). The authors write that Comden and Green only had three standards, and yet they include four in this book (New York New York, The Party's Over, Just in Time and Make Someone Happy). There are some odd choices, such as "It's Not Where You Start" (from Seesaw) that is not remotely a standard, but they omit "If He Walked Into My Life" (from Mame) and "The Way We Were." And much as we all love the musical Chicago, I don't think it merits a page-and-a-half (I'm not even sure "All That Jazz" qualifies as a standard) but there's no coverage of "Tomorrow" (from Annie) or "What I Did For Love" (A Chorus Line). The authors probably would have been smarter to just stop coverage in the 1950s or 1960s.

You really can read this book cover to cover...or the information on each song's background can stand alone. If you're interested in modern musical history, you won't want to miss this.

A delightful journey in melodic nostalgia. Philip Furia and Michael Lasser use their long experience with American popular music to tell us with insight and humor how more than 600 songs dating from 1910 to 1977 came to be written, how they were received, how they touched American culture. The surprise for the reader is the discovery of how many of the songs linger in one's memory, how many of the words one can recall, how many of the tunes one can still sing. Then the message of the place of the songs in American life comes home, how much they say about the way we lived.

Not a book to be read from cover to cover but rather one to be browsed for favorite parts, one to be returned to time and again.

America's Songs is a wonderful source of fascinating information on the lyricists and composers of the great standards. Anyone who loves those songs will find this book invaluable. Writers Furia and Lasser have produced a tour de force.

An entertaining overview of American popular music. The authors have compiled a small encyclopedia about the subject, creating their version of The Great American Songbook. Recommended.

Very good read. The brief overviews of each song gives one a terrific insight into the story behind the melody and probably covers 95% of the actual event.
I read it on a flight from North Carolina to LA and it was the perfect companion.

It's amazing it took so long for this seemingly inevitable, fascinating and indispensable book to be written.Every page has several nuggets of pop folklore that will surprise and entertain even people who pride themselves on being semi-experts in the American songbook (like me). I bought three copies for gifts for similarly addicted pop song freaks.

I only learned of "America's Songs" from a mention on co-author Michael Lasser's weekly program "Fascinating Rhythm" which is carried by too few NPR stations. A friend much better versed in the "American Songbook" than I had never heard of it either, though the it was originally published in 2006. My 17-year-old granddaughter, an amateur actress-singer-dancer was entranced by it.