Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins - Hardcover

Jenkins, Bruce

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1583941266 ISBN 13: 9781583941263

Publisher: Frog Books, 2005

Synopsis

Goodbye combines biography with a son's discovery of his father. Gordon Jenkins, one of America's most significant musical figures throughout his 50-year career, collaborated with many of the major talents in postwar pop and jazz. Modest by nature, he rarely spoke of his accomplishments, and there was much to discover when, on account of his father's death in 1984, Bruce Jenkins began his research. Paralleling the story of Gordon Jenkins's personal life is a veritable history of popular music, featuring luminaries from Irving Berlin to Billie Holiday. This richly anecdotal biography relates a wealth of heretofore untold stories of his encounters with icons like Sinatra, who was uncharacteristically awestruck by him, and Judy Garland, whom only Jenkins could convince to go onstage when she was crippled with anxiety. A concluding chapter documents Jenkins's slow, difficult death from ALS, leaving readers with an unforgettable image of a legend dying with dignity and unexpected good humor.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce Jenkins has been a member of the San Francisco Chronicle sports staff since 1973 and a columnist since 1989. He has covered twenty-four World Series, fourteen Wimbledons, and many other major events, including the Super Bowl, World Cup soccer, the NBA Finals, the four major golf tournaments, and the U.S. Open tennis championships. He has been twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Chronicle: in 1992 for his columns on the Barcelona Olympics and in 2002 for baseball coverage. He has also won national awards for baseball, basketball, football, and tennis writing.

Born and raised in Malibu, California, Jenkins attended Santa Monica High School and the University of California at Berkeley, where he graduated in Journalistic Studies in 1971. He has written three previous books, all published by North Atlantic Books/Frog Ltd.: Life After Saberhagen, a preview of the 1986 baseball season; North Shore Chronicles, about big-wave surfing in Hawaii, and A Good Man, the biography of basketball coaching legend Pete Newell. Jenkins lives in Montara, California, with his wife, sports photographer Martha Jenkins, and their daughter, Molly.

Reviews

"Frank Sinatra once told me that he and my father were the two saddest men," writes Jenkins in his biography of his father, Gordon "Gor" Jenkins. As a top-notch composer, arranger, conductor and performer, "Gor" worked with many of the great singers of the 1940s through the 1960s, and is probably best known for the suites Seven Dreams and Manhattan Tower, as well as Frank Sinatra's hit, "It Was a Very Good Year," which earned Gor a Grammy in 1965. The book reads like a Who's Who of the period, with vignettes spotlighting Gor's work with Nat Cole, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee and many others. Perhaps most surprising is the author's account of his father's obsession with The Weavers, and Jenkins's interview with Pete Seeger provides first-hand information on the folk group's 1950 recording sessions, Decca Records's confusion about how to market the group and the controversy over the lyrics for "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena." A highlight of the volume is Jenkins's interview with Sinatra. Jenkins, a San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist, writes in a relaxed, breezy style, and much of the book is quoted material from his interviews with the artists, providing a trove of fresh material for swing, jazz and folk fans.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Frog Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1583941266
• ISBN 13: 9781583941263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 341