Amazon.com Review
Need to know if Roger Moore ever released a 45, or if Sherman Hemsley made more than one album? (For the, er, record: yes for Moore, no for Hemsley.)
Goldmine's Celebrity Vocals is the mother lode of all such facts. Subtitled accurately as "Surprising, Unexpected and Obscure Recordings by Actors, Sports Heroes and Celebrities," it's a handy reference source--but more than that, it's a loopy diversion. As you wander through the pages, the sheer fact of the existence of some of these recordings can be as entertaining as seeking them out and hearing them for yourself.
The book's all-inclusiveness is such that you get the full discographical information on everyone from Mussolini's piano-playing son to director Steven Spielberg (entire output: he whistles on The Color Purple soundtrack). Dates of birth are provided throughout, as are current market values (as of the book's publish date) for the recordings. However, the cover touts the inclusion of "biographical sketches of the artists," and on that front it falls short: one or two sentences in Western Union-speak, delineating only the aspects that qualify each one as celebrity or sports hero, do not constitute a biographical sketch. That shortcoming is offset by the inclusion of a birthplace index--just pick a city and see if anyone famous was born there! Trivial? Perhaps, but perfect comfort on a hot, muggy day, when literature just won't register. --David Greenberger
"Personality" music--that is, recordings featuring vocals by celebrities known for anything but singing (TV and movie stars, athletes, even politicians)--has become a sought-after commodity among record collectors and other pop-culture buffs. The genre (if that's what it is) has been documented memorably in ReSearch's two-volume survey,
Incredibly Strange Music, and now is cataloged in a guidebook from the record collectors' periodical,
Goldmine. Although a price guide to collectible discs, the volume is useful as a guide to the strangeness that lies out there in thrift stores and garage sales, ranging from
Songs I Like by Dick Van Dyke and Clint Eastwood's country album to love songs from Anthony Quinn and Jack Webb. Among nonactors in the volume's pool of 1,500 singer wanna-bes are romance writer Barbara Cartman (backed by the Royal Philharmonic), Chicago Bears Walter Payton and William Perry (who collaborated on a rap single), and even John Paul II (
Songs of the Pope, sung in Polish). The phenomenon continues with recent releases by such luminaries as Kathie Lee Gifford and David Hasselhoff.
Gordon Flagg
