The Last Musical Hurrah: Jazz and Pop Singing and the Onslaught of Rock, Paperback

The Last Musical Hurrah: Jazz and Pop Singing and the Onslaught of Rock. The title alone should give you some idea of the subject matter. To elaborate just a bit, it is about the impact of the tsunami of rock and roll as it swept across the land circa 1955-'65 and all but obliterated the half-century of songwriting achievements of such as the Gershwins, Porter, Berlin, et al that had come before. A body of work that has since come to be called, collectively, The Great American Songbook. "There's scarcely a lemon in this 250-singer lot (circa 1955-'65. And, to think, they did it all without Auto-Tune. Thus-mid-20th Century-most of them were preparing themselves to become the next Stafford or Sinatra. It was unfathomable to them that the time would ever come when they'd have to do their own bookings and publicity, keep mailing lists, and release records on their own, etc. And yet . . ." The 250 singers alluded to in the above paragraph were, for the most part, very talented individuals. But there was only so much post-rock room in the cultural lifeboat and the vast majority of them sank without a trace after-at one and the same time-their first and last vinyl hurrahs. This book is their story i.e., entries on each of these vocalists; their backgrounds, the album in question and (whenever it was possible to ascertain) how their stories played out. This book contains 8,500 song titles.

About the Author:

Bill Reed is a journalist and writer whose articles on show business, the arts and popular music have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Examiner, and International Documentary. He also has five published books to his credit, including Hot from Harlem: Profiles in Classic African-American Entertainment. He has also worked as a video jack-of-all trades for the Criterion Collection, and produced many jazz records for Japan. Of this book, musicologist/entertainer Michael Feinstein writes: "What a marvelous idea for a book! How fantastic that you are preserving an important part of history."