America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley

From the Editors

<EM>America's Songs</EM> tells the "stories behind" the most beloved popular songs of the last century. We all have songs that have a special meaning in our lives; hearing them evokes a special time or place. Little wonder that these special songs have become enduring classics. Nothing brings the roarin '20s to life like "Tea for Two" or "I'm just Wild About Harry"; the Great Depression is evoked in all of its pain and misery in songs like "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?; "God Bless America" revives the powerful hope that American democracy promised to the world during the dark days of World War II; "Young at Heart" evokes the postwar optimism of the '50s. And then there are the countless songs of love, new romance, and heartbreak: "As Time Goes By," "Always," "Am I Blue"...the list is endless.<BR>Along with telling the stories behind these songs, <EM>America's Songs</EM> suggests, simply and succinctly, what makes a song great. The book illuminates the way each great song melds words and music -- sentiment and melody -- into a seamless whole. America's Songs also traces the fascinating but mysterious process of collaboration, the give-and-take between two craftsmen, a composer and a lyricist, as they combined their talents to create a song.<BR>For anyone interested in the history of the songs that America loves, <EM>America's</EM> <EM>Songs </EM>will make for fascinating reading.
Product Description

Customer Response

History with a melody!
Very good read. The brief overviews of each song gives one a terrific insight into the story behind the melody and probably covers 95% of the actual event.
I read it on a flight from North Carolina to LA and it was the perfect companion.

God Bless America's Songs
It's amazing it took so long for this seemingly inevitable, fascinating and indispensable book to be written.Every page has several nuggets of pop folklore that will surprise and entertain even people who pride themselves on being semi-experts in the American songbook (like me). I bought three copies for gifts for similarly addicted pop song freaks.

America's Songs
An entertaining overview of American popular music. The authors have compiled a small encyclopedia about the subject, creating their version of The Great American Songbook. Recommended.

A musical gem
I only learned of "America's Songs" from a mention on co-author Michael Lasser's weekly program "Fascinating Rhythm" which is carried by too few NPR stations. A friend much better versed in the "American Songbook" than I had never heard of it either, though the it was originally published in 2006. My 17-year-old granddaughter, an amateur actress-singer-dancer was entranced by it.

Lots of fun info but some annoying errors
There was a lot of great info in this book, especially covering songs from the first half of the 20th century. But there were also some annoying errors and omissions. Among the errors: a photo of the original star of Cabaret (Jill Haworth) is labeled as Jan Clayton (who was the original star of Carousel several decades earlier). The authors write that Comden and Green only had three standards, and yet they include four in this book (New York New York, The Party's Over, Just in Time and Make Someone Happy). There are some odd choices, such as "It's Not Where You Start" (from Seesaw) that is not remotely a standard, but they omit "If He Walked Into My Life" (from Mame) and "The Way We Were." And much as we all love the musical Chicago, I don't think it merits a page-and-a-half (I'm not even sure "All That Jazz" qualifies as a standard) but there's no coverage of "Tomorrow" (from Annie) or "What I Did For Love" (A Chorus Line). The authors probably would have been smarter to just stop coverage in the 1950s or 1960s.

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