Customer Reviews

Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with '50s Pop Music

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

 

 

Strangely mean spirited, "Great Pretenders" most likely will disappoint fans of the seven performers profiled in the book.

This could have been such a compelling book, as it looks at the lives of a group of performers often overlooked by music historians. But it's a little hard to buy Karen Schoemer's opinions, or even believe everything she writes. She was a music critic for "Newsweek," yet she claims that she never heard the Barbra Streisand recording of "People?" Even harder to believe: She asks Frankie Laine about his 1957 album entitled "Rockin'," but says she never bothered to look at what songs are on the album. This woman is a professional music critic - why would you bring up an album if you had no clue what material it contained? Then she slams "Rockin'" because it contains re-recordings of his earlier hits, not mentioning that was a common practice that everyone from Sinatra to Dinah Shore did at the time. I agree with a previous reviewer who said she was particularly harsh on Mr. Laine. Schoemer seems to have no idea of what he meant to audiences of the time. "The absence of sexiness in his voice, the bland bonhomie" she writes, then later saying he was "more chaste, less threatening" than early Sinatra. What she doesn't seem to know is that Laine's sexy performing style and R&B-flavored crooning earned him the nickname Mr. Rhythm early in his career, and his rougher edges were seen as a bit unsettling compared to Sinatra's more traditional crooning. Also, and this is just a personal opinion: The man is about turn 93 - Has he done anything to merit such a bitter portrayal at this stage of his life?

Even factually, some of the book seems off kilter. She says the Bear Family Connie Francis box sets sell for close to $300. Check amazon - the list price is under $130 for both English-language sets. I've had both since they were released; the prices haven't changed in that time. Schoemer says "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" starred Joan Crawford, who is nowhere to be found in that film (it stars Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland) -- didn't this book go through fact-checking?

Schoemer intersperses vignettes of her own life between the profiles, but it's all a bit clumsy. And while one not need be a fan to write about music, you should at least be able to appreciate it. Schoemer approaches the music with a snarky, campy, condescending eye, rather than hearing what made it so compelling to audiences in its original day. The music is still compelling -- if you're willing to listen with an open mind.

(Make that ** 1/2 stars)

Make no mistake: Karen Schoemer's book is first and foremost about Karen Schoemer (including unwelcome details about her sex life). Her opinions on the artists she interviews are of little worth, seeing how the fullest extent of her "research" (she actually admits this!) was often to pop a "greatest hits" cassette into her car radio on the drive each "interview." (She doesn't exactly print interviews with them -- snippets of interviews would be more accurate.)

Schoemer "gets" the music of some of the artists, and totally misses that of others. She is utterly clueless when it comes to pre-rock and roll era stars like Patti Page, Georgia Gibbs and especially Frankie Laine. She's basically a rock critic attempting to "understand" her mother's attraction to pop rock (post-Page, Gibbs and Laine) music, so why these three artists were included is anybody's guess.

My own guess is that their names are what is going to sell her book (anyway, that was my reason for buying it).

Still, as frustrating as the book is when dealing with classic pop, the author manages to bring up two good points: 1) that rock and roll owes a large debt to the pop music that preceeded it; and 2) that loving an artist or a song is akin to a love affair. Okay, neither sentiment is particularly original or profound, but in the profusion of rock-oriented music "histories," the first point needs to be stressed as often and in as many venues as possible.

Schoemer fares best when interviewing former teen idols (male var.) from the early rock era (Fabian and Pat Boone), both of whom she developes large crushes on; supporting and illustrating the second of her second-hand points. When Schoemer is turned on by a star, she's more likely to get turned on by their music -- so her chapters on them (or, rather, on her reactions to them) are far more positive.

It's unfortunate that the book wasn't written by someone who actually understands and enjoys the music of the great singers who are being "profiled." Since the majority of readers purchasing the book are going to be fans of artists rather than the author, the coupling of Schoemer's narcissistic confessional style with her general ignorance of 50s pop, become nearly insurmountable flaws.

The book also lacks pictures of the stars Schoemer "interviews." I suppose this was done to keep down production costs; but since the author doesn't mention bringing a camera with her, the idea of showing fans how their favorite singers look probably never entered her head. (There is, however, a vanity shot of Schoemer on the inside of the dust cover.)

What ultimately saves the book, however, is the author's interview with Georgia Gibbs. No, she doesn't get Gibbs' music -- she fails to appreciate Gibbs' beautiful voice and doesn't like her haunting ballads and torch songs. Still she gives us something that is priceless in its rarity -- an interview with Georgia Gibbs herself! That alone was worth the price of the book for me.

Normally I am caught up in books discussing much more serious subjects. It was time for a break. So when a friend told me he had just finished up Karen Schoemer's "Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair With 50's Pop Music" and offered me his copy I simply could not resist. In fact, I had almost purchased the book myself a couple of months ago. It was a book I had high hopes for and I wound up reading it in a single day. As one who has been collecting popular music for more than 40 years I hoped to gain some additional insight into the music of the early 1950's. Very little has been written about this period and much of what you do find is extremely negative. Most of the so called "enlightened" rock critics immediately dismiss the music of such artists as Pat Boone, Connie Francis and Patti Page as trite and superficial. Yet this music certainly struck a chord with millions of Americans in the early fifties. Karen Schoemer wanted to find out why and she certainly seemed to have the credentials. She wanted to know why her parents, her mom in particular, loved this stuff. So she decided to write a book about this era. She began this project back in 1999 and admittedly struggled with the concept over the next several years. In the end she wound up interviewing seven of the era's biggest stars. She chatted with Patti Page and Frankie Laine, Georgia Gibbs, Fabian, Tommy Sands and two of the biggest stars of early 50's pop Connie Francis and Pat Boone. Much to her surprise she discovered that most of these folks were anything but the stuffy, uptight people she expected to find. As of matter of fact she really did like most of them. And as her work on the book proceeded she found herself enjoying this music even more. She suddenly decided it was OK to enjoy this stuff despite what the so-called critics thought of it. Not everything she listened to had to be hip or loud or socially relevant. Karen Schoemer had discovered what made this music so attractive to her parents generation.

"Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with 50's Pop Music" is in fact a mighty strange book. I craved to learn more about the songs and about the artists Karen had a chance to speak with. Instead I came away frustrated that I did not find out as much about these people and their careers as I had expected. In general, I found "Great Pretenders" to be pretty unfocused at times and I certainly could have done without the frequent references to the authors personal life. For a project in the works for 7 years I would have to classify it as somewhat of a disappointment. In spite of all of its shortcomings I still managed to finish "Great Pretenders". I just happened to be in the mood for some lighter reading and it fit the bill perfectly. Though it was not a total waste of my time in the final analysis this is a book that clearly misses the mark. As such it is not a book that I can wholeheartedly recommend.

As a major enthusiast of the late '50s/early '60s teen sound, I was excited to check out this book. Unfortunately, Schoemer's attitude toward the music she's writing about is apparently the same attitude held by the vast majority of music critics, albeit wrapped in a different package. My first problem with this book is that the author doesn't seem to know what she's writing about. Several times in the introduction, she refers to "teen pop," but only a few of the performers she features are truly teen pop. If she'd taken the time to research the teen sound instead of namedropping her hip indie rock pals, maybe she would have figured out that teen pop and pre-rock 'n' roll pop are not the same thing.

I was also confused by her desire to write about this music before actually listening to any of it. From reading the introduction, I was able to gather that this book was some sort of response to her relationship with her mother. If that's the case, she should have written an autobiography. I was particulary upset by the chapter about the great Tommy Sands. Schoemer makes a big deal out of how much she wants to interview Tommy, and I can't blame her -- I'd love that opportunity myself. However, we soon learn that she's never even heard Tommy's music, and her main reason for wanting to interview him was because her mother liked him. She buys a CD of his Steady Date album, and describes his song "Teen-Age Crush" as "grotesque" and decides that the only way she can "enjoy" his music is to think of it as being so bad that it's good. This is an insult to both Tommy and the countless people who truly enjoy his music.

While I appreciate the fact that Schoemer wants to revive interest in talented artists such as Tommy Sands, Fabian and Connie Francis, I wish that the author would have written this book because of a true love for their music. Instead, she seems more interested in herself and proving other music critics "wrong." Since Schoemer is supposedly a music writer, I would have hoped that she'd realize that music is not about being "wrong" or "right," but about simply loving the music. Unfortunately, that is not the case with this book.

Why do below average authors get their boring books published and other,more talented ones go by the wayside? Just asking...

Having read this book in one sitting I can't begin to imagine the waste of beautiful trees..The so-called "interviews" with the singers were seemingly written by a fifth grader. They were one-dimensional and completely uninformative. Why the author felt anyone would be interested in her personal family upbringing and life is something only she can figure out. Obviously she knows someone in the publishing industry with poor judgement in book selection.

I hope someone writes a more worthy book on this subject. She certainly didn't.

It'a an ambitious look with a complicated thesis and perhaps only a really theoretically comfortable writer might have pulled it off, someone like Greil Marcus or the late Lillian Roxon for example. Basically we have been led to believe that pop music entered a steep decline after Elvis joined the army and before the Liverpool invasion of December 1963. Schoemer argues that it was not as bad as all that, which isn't that much of a thesis, but it's interesting to think about. She reproduces a typical top 100 pop list for a week in 1959, and a mere survey of the list proves her very point that American pop music, even in what was supposedly the worst of times, had a richness and a depth and a freshness that you just can't associate with the second rate.

Wasn't it CS Lewis said that the health of a country depends on the richness and multiplicity of its minor writers--not its great superstars, but the everyday writers in the background? Schoemer has something of the sort to prove here, and yet her book lacks the requisite concision and force to make its case. Two huge problems get in the way. Number one, her own personal saga (and her problems with her mother) might be the single dullest storyline of any work of creative non fiction of the past 20 years. Reading this book, you just can't believe she held down a professional job (music critic at NEWSWEEK?) for she comes across as a self-obsessed blogger.

Problem number two, is that she decides to hone in on seven pop stars of the period, which might have been an OK strategy, had she been able to bring even one iota of insight into any of them. Patti Page comes off best, but Schoemer's just not prepared enough to do a proper interview. Patronizing isn't the word. She wastes their time with her ill-defined "Tell me what you meant to girls of my mother's generation" questions. It could have been a really good book, instead it's a great pretender.

Through the first 30 pages of this book, I was rolling right along with the author's premise and intrigued by her point of view. Then came this: " . . . jazz coronetist Sidney Bechet." Now I suppose one could have meant "clarinetist", or even may have mistakenly thought Bechet played cornet, or even conflated the two, but from that point, I found it difficult to take seriously anything in the book, given either the author's or editor's carelessness in regard to this point. Furthermore, I was constantly distracted by mental images of someone trying to play a coronet: can't blow into it, so I guess you'd have to bang it like a tambourine (which this pair would probably render as 'trampoline.')Hardly a book goes by in which you can't find some egregious editorial error of this sort. One would think Simon & Schuster could pay enough to obtain competent editorial help. As for Ms. Schoemer, as a would-be music critic of the stature to which she aspires in these pages, she simply should have known better.

As noted elsewhere in these reviews, instances of this sort keep cropping up, and I found my interest (and Ms. Schoemer's credibility) slowly dwindling. Too bad---given the subject and Ms. Schoemer's interesting take on it, this could have been a pretty good read; as for me, I'll just go play my coronet.

Three of Ms. Schoemer's chapters are titles "Me". "Me Again" and "More Me."

The bulk of Ms. Schoemer's text is a "who cares" dialogue about her iffy relationship with her parents...especially her mother. It's much more about "Me" than it is about the 50's singers....and I was bored to death. Save your money!

I received this book on a Monday evening and was finished by Wednesday morning. Although the author's personal story sometimes gets in the way, overall it's an accessible interesting read. The pen pictures of the seven interview subjects are by far the best part. Albeit etched with a little acid, they project a general sense of fairness --- the Frankie Laine portrait being perhaps the one exception. Of the seven, Pat Boone comes across as the most integrated fully rounded personality, truly someone who seems to bear no grudges or in any way feel intimidated by his many critics. Good for him!

Now how about the author letting us have a follow-up with the rest of her interview material?

A patinet, open-minded reader with a strong interest in the ethics of pop music criticism will find a wealth of issues to mull over in Schoemer's "Great Pretenders." However, readers who want an objective, detailed look at the careers of such crooners as Peggy Lee, Fabian, and Georgia Gibbs may be dissapointed with the autobiographical center of Schoemer's book.

Ostenibly about pop music vocalists of the 1950s, as the page numbers advance the point of "Great Pretenders" becomes unclear--mainly because Schoemer confesses over and over her own confusuion and lack of focus at the time of her research. And this is where the fascinating questions come up. What makes good music good and bad music bad? Do marketers of music have an obligation to deliver a challenging, creative product? Most of all, why has rock'n'roll history as we now know it been tweaked to marginalize the impact of squeaky-clean pop vocalists, making them pariahs while issuing sainthood to performers like Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Chuck Berry? Schoemer's digging into Billboard charts and crates of musty records reveals that pop music at the time was not so clearly defined as critics choose to see it now through a somewhat distorted lens.

That's the meat of the book. Scheomer's own struggles with chronic fandom and family tension take up a great deal of space, however, and they distract from the larger picture. A little less of Schomer's story would have allowed more of the profiles of the pop statrs as they are today, and it is in these segments that the multiple threads of "Great Pretenders" bind together into an enlightening whole.