Louder the music there!
Next Wednesday our friends at the Claremont Institute will post the holiday book selections of the institute's friends on its Web site. I was delighted to be asked to submit a list; everything I think I know about American history and politics I have learned from Harry Jaffa and his students who are the mainstays of the institute. But I was stumped about how I might contribute anything that would add to the festivities.
It occurred to me that the only subject about which I might know more than the other folks who will contribute to the institute's holiday book picks is popular music. Perhaps a few books on the subject might be of interest? With Hannukah already winding down and Christmas coming into view, I thought it might be appropriate to preview my picks for Power Line readers. The following is my submission to the institute for its coming holiday feature:
I want to hear American singing! Unlike Walt Whitman, however, I need some help. These books have deepened my understanding of American popular music and enhanced my pleasure in listening to it. They are both pleasing in themselves and instructive in their field. Who could ask for anything more?
When Mark Steyn's British publisher commissioned a book on the history of musicals, I doubt that Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now is precisely what it had in mind. This eccentric book slices and dices the elements of Broadway musicals, recapitulating them with Steyn's characteristic learning and humor. Steyn observes in passing that "to recite the titles of the American song catalogue is to celebrate the American language," and then gives more than twenty examples -- one of many cheers that Steyn sends up in the book. But his catcalls are also among the book's highlights.
In Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists, Professor Philip Furia brings his formidable skills as a literary critic to bear on the artistry of the American songbook's foremost lyricists. Professor Furia wears his learning lightly, but he deploys it to great effect. The book culminates in a vivid account of Johnny Mercer's composition of the words to "Midnight Sun" in 1955 while driving between Newport Beach and Hollywood listening to the original instrumental jazz version on his car radio.
Will Friedwald has written good books about and in collaboration with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. In Stardust Melodies: A Biography of America's 12 Most Popular Songs, Friedwald tells the story of the composition of songs including "As Time Goes By" and "Lush Life." Friedwald also digs into the recording history of each song, exploring the interpretations that successive artists have brought to their performance of the songs. One of Friedwald's criteria for selecting the songs is the existence of a multiplicity of interpretations, thus ruling out, for example, "Over the Rainbow." Friedwald's approach yields many surprises and pays big dividends.
Peter Guralnick may be the best writer ever to devote himself to American popular music. He has a gift for writing profiles and narrative as well as unfailing good taste in music. In his two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, he joins a scholar's mania for detail and accuracy to a fan's passion. The result is definitive. But Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom is my favorite of his books. In it Guralnick tells the history of soul music, taking a kind of sidelong glance at the civil rights era in America. The history is deeply affecting; Guralnick helps us not only to hear America singing, but to hear what it means. This book has echoed in my mind long after I first read it fifteen years ago.
UPDATE and POSTSCRIPT: One of the musical highlights of the year for me was seeing Brian Wilson in person for the first time when he performed the American debut of "Smile" in Minneapolis. The show took place the night of the first Bush-Kerry debate, so the show was not only a high in itself, it spared me some pain I would otherwise have experienced by watching the debate. I wrote about Brian Wilson and the show in "Lost and found."
One of our favorite Power Line readers is a true expert on the Beach Boys -- Don Cunnningham, author of Add Some Music To Your Day: Analyzing and Enjoying the Music of the Beach Boys. Don was the editor of "Add Some Music," the respected and fondly-remembered Beach Boys fanzine of 1978-1984; the book compiles over 40 newly-edited articles, essays, and reviews culled from the magazine that provide a serious and critical perspective on the music of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys.
Don writes in response to my selections above:
Hey, tell The Big Trunk to come up to baby-boomer speed with my book on the music of the Beach Boys....Check it out at Amazon...Although I'm afraid I'm up to baby boomer speed, I recommend Don's book unreservedly. Seeking a bonus for our readers, I asked Don if he would comment on the merits of the two relatively new books on the Beach Boys' epochal "Pet Sounds" album. The two books are Charles Granata's Wouldn't It Be Nice: Brian Wilson and the Making of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and Kingsley Abbott's The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds: The Greatest Album of the Twentieth Century. Don writes:
The Granata book is a great read. Although many of the facts in this book were presented in David Leaf's "Pet Sounds" box-set booklet and elsewhere, Granata crafts a flowing text of moment and insight, with gentle opinion and acute edits of the many voices of persons who were present at the making and who understand (that is, musicians).Add some music to your day!The Kingsley Abbott book (with its embarrassing exaggeration) suggests a text of analysis, and the book comes up short. Way short. A good rule of thumb: Avoid a Brit's analysis of the Beach Boys and a Yank's analysis of the Beatles. For "Pet Sounds," go with Granata.
