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The House that George Built
By Wilfrid Sheed
A History of the Golden Age of American popular music - With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty.
This book is special - written with the verve, excitement, and magnetic quality of a beautiful song!
Wilfrid Sheed has written a history of the Golden Age of American song that sings as you turn the pages. Many of these song writers were his friends, so the witty asides, the social contact, the personalities of each of the "greats" shines through with a brilliance worthy of the subject matter.
When Sheed tells us that Izzy Baline transformed himself into Irving Berlin one starts to smile, and when the "young immigrant from New York's Lower East Side heard black jazz and blues and turned it into an artistic torrent nothing short of miraculous" you know you're reading an author who knows what he's writing about.
The words come to Wilfrid Sheed the way the music came to the song writers in the book, perhaps because he lived those years with them. This man is a biographer, a social historian, music critic and analyst all rolled into one.
I needed to read pages over and over again to try to remember and assimilate all of the information contained in this wonderful tribute to the guys that ( and once again I quote ) " tripled the world's total supply of singable tunes ",Wilfrid Sheed is the author of Office Politics and People Will Always Be Kind which were both nominated for National Book Awards. He lives in New Haven, New York.
Don't miss this one!
Published: Random House
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York, NY
Copyright: © 2007 by Wilfrid Sheed
Reviewed: 10/15/07 - 234
Copyright: © 2007 by Joan G. Smith
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