Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs for Broadway Shows and Hollywood Musicals - Hardcover

Zinsser, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1567921477 ISBN 13: 9781567921472

Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2000

Synopsis

In this warm and affectionate book, William Zinsser, author of the best-selling classic On Writing Well, describes his lifelong love affair with American popular song and the American musical theater. These are the words and melodies that are as familiar to us as the flag, so firmly ensconced in our mental topographies that they have become part of our standard literature, songs adopted and adapted by generations of performers, jazz singers, and musicians, deeply lodged in the memory of everyone who has ever heard them.

All the Things You Are, Star Dust, Over the Rainbow, Laura, Stormy Weather, Some Enchanted Evening, Someone to Watch Over Me, My Funny Valentine the tunes are as "easy to remember" as breathing, but how were they written? What stars and what shows were they written for? Who were the men and women who wrote them? What makes the songs so good? Zinsser answers these questions. Starting with Show Boat in 1927, he provides a comprehensive overview, telling his story through the lives and careers of the great composers and lyricists: Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Dorothy Fields, Hoagy Carmichael, Johnny Mercer, Harry Warren, Jule Styne, Frank Loesser, Stephen Sondheim, and many more.

Zinsser writes from an intimate knowledge of the songs, as a scholar of the American musical theater, and as a pianist-performer himself. The result is a book unlike any other in its authority, insight, and detail. Written with the author's usual elegance and humor, supported by lyrics that instantly bring back the songs and their emotional associations, Easy to Remember is handsomely illustrated with rare photographs of the songwriters and with sheet music covers of the songs they wrote one of America's gaudiest forms of poster art. With indices, song lists, and an extensive bibliography for show-tune aficionados, this is going to be the standard bedside reference for anyone who has ever found themselves seduced by this great American art form.

About this title

About the Author:

William Zinsser is the author of On Writing Well and fifteen other books. His many writings on music include Mitchell & Ruff, an acclaimed profile of the pianist Dwike Mitchell and the bassist Willie Ruff that is a masterpiece of jazz reportage and informal biography. He teaches at the New School in New York city, where he lives with his wife, Caroline Zinsser.

From Publishers Weekly:

Zinsser's enthusiasm for his subject emanates from the pages of this study of "the golden age of American popular song," framed by "the musical Show Boat in 1927... until the rise of rock in the mid-1960s." "My book doesn't claim to be definitive," writes Zinsser, theater and movie critic for The New York Herald Tribune during the '50s, professional piano player and author of 16 books, including On Writing Well and Mitchell & Ruff; "it's just one man's tour of his collection, as idiosyncratic as another man's collection of stamps or coins or butterflies." Zinsser uses the biographies of major songwriting talents as centerpieces for his in-depth portrayal of the days when "every home seemed to have a piano and at least one member of the family who could play it." He includes chapters on sheet music, songs from WWII and the direct impact that vocalists, Hollywood stars (Fred Astaire) and movies (The Wizard of Oz) had on popular composers. Moving from the "agreeable world" of Hoagy Carmichael to "hit machines" like Harry Warren, to the ambitious works of Gershwin, Zinsser demonstrates their centrality in the sphere of American music. He discusses not only harmony, intervals and syncopation, but he also includes the humble stories of talents who strove for, stumbled upon or seized prominence. Despite Zinsser's personal enthusiasm, the work never veers into sentimentality. "My book is a celebration, not a funeral, and one of the miracles I'm celebrating is how powerfully the songs have become lodged in the nation's collective memory," Zinsser explains. His effort is worthy of his ambition. B & w photographs and illustrations. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1567921477
• ISBN 13: 9781567921472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256