Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices From Bessie Smith To Bebop And Beyond

by Will Friedwald

Overview

This book is an overview of jazz and jazz-influenced pop singers. Among the major figures discussed are Armstrong, Crosby, Holiday, Fitzgerald, Sinatra, Eckstine, Vaughan, Torme and Bennett, along with descriptions of the contributions of secondary and forgotten talents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306807121
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	08/22/1996
Pages:	540
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Will Friedwald is the author of The Warner Bros. Cartoons, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and Sinatra! The Song Is You.

Editorial Reviews

The exhaustive research, useful discographies, and absence of a comparable study on the subject assures this work a place in many collections, but the eccentricities of style and the labyrinth of facts make it, at best, a difficult read and, at worst, annoying. Those with only a casual knowledge of the subject might find themselves lost in the sudden shifts from figure to figure and might also fall easy prey to the author's flippant dismissal of certain performers whose work he holds in undisguised contempt. To become what it pretends to be, this work needs a big infusion of objectivity and an editor with as big an aversion to the parenthetical phrase as Friedwald has to the Ink Spots.-- Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll., N.Y.

Library Journal