Download or read book Crooner written by Alex Coles and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2023-07-24 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate history of the crooner in popular music from the 1950s to the present. In this book, Alex Coles explores the history of the crooner—someone who sings close to the mic in a soft style—in popular music from the 1950s to the present. Each chapter focuses on how one song by one artist contributes to the image of the crooner in the popular imagination. The book describes the rich diversity of crooners throughout music history, including artists in disco, rock, hip-hop, and more such as Frank Sinatra, Scott Walker, Barry White, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Tom Waits, Grace Jones, Ian McCulloch, Nick Cave, and Nas. Ultimately, Coles shows how the crooner continues to connect listeners with their hidden feelings.
Download or read book Real Men Don t Sing written by Allison McCracken and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-17 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crooner Rudy Vallée's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity. Although Vallée and other crooners reflected the gender fluidity of late-1920s popular culture, their challenge to the Depression era's more conservative masculine norms led cultural authorities to stigmatize them as gender and sexual deviants. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken outlines crooning's history from its origins in minstrelsy through its development as the microphone sound most associated with white recording artists, band singers, and radio stars. She charts early crooners’ rise and fall between 1925 and 1934, contrasting Rudy Vallée with Bing Crosby to demonstrate how attempts to contain crooners created and dictated standards of white masculinity for male singers. Unlike Vallée, Crosby survived the crooner backlash by adapting his voice and persona to adhere to white middle-class masculine norms. The effects of these norms are felt to this day, as critics continue to question the masculinity of youthful, romantic white male singers. Crooners, McCracken shows, not only were the first pop stars: their short-lived yet massive popularity fundamentally changed American culture.
Download or read book Bing Crosby written by Richard Grudens and published by celebrity profiles publilshing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the quintessential Bing Crosby tribute from the pen of author and music historian, Richard Grudens, documenting the story of Crosby's colourful life, family, radio and television shows, and films; the amazing success story of a career that pioneered popular music spanning generations and inspiring many followers: Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Jerry Vale, Dean Martin, Eddie Fisher, Pat Boone, Elvis Presley and Billy Eckstine, all of whom acknowledge their debt right between the covers of this book. An inspirational introduction by his lovely wife, Kathryn Grant Crosby, is followed by endearing, anecdotal accounts of those ubiquitous 'Road' films with Bob Hope, and detailed personal testimonials from show business icons in their own words. A 'must read' for Crosby fans, collectors, admirers, music lovers, and everyone who cherishes the music and anecdotes of the players involved in the Golden Age of Popular Music.
Download or read book Russ Columbo and the Crooner Mystique written by Joseph Lanza and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though his strange and premature death became one of Hollywood Babylon's weirdest chapters, this King of the Crooners' and 'Valentino of Radio' had a voice that spoke to a world still drifting in the malaise following the First World War. Taking a devoted and personal look into this crooner's art and life, this biography derives much of its information from Columbo's otherwise long-lost personal effects, including original movie transcripts, love letters to and from Carole Lombard and other movie actresses, and the singer's daily diaries.'
Download or read book The Italian Crooners Bedside Companion written by Richard Grudens and published by celebrity profiles publilshing. This book was released on 2004-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides insight into the lives of Italian musical personalities and features over 100 photos. This compendium explores the musical world of Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine, Perry Como, Jerry Vale, Al Martino, Dean Martin, Julius La Rosa, Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Don Cornell, Bobby Darin, Louis Prima, Lou Monte, Russ Columbo, and many others.
Download or read book Nocturnes written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful. With the clarity and precision that have become his trademarks, Kazuo Ishiguro interlocks five short pieces of fiction to create a world that resonates with emotion, heartbreak, and humor. Here is a fragile, once famous singer, turning his back on the one thing he loves; a music junky with little else to offer his friends but opinion; a songwriter who inadvertently breaks up a marriage; a jazz musician who thinks the answer to his career lies in changing his physical appearance; and a young cellist whose tutor has devised a remarkable way to foster his talent. For each, music is a central part of their lives and, in one way or another, delivers them to an epiphany.
Download or read book Hollywood Italians written by Peter E. Bondanella and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is a celebration of nearly a century of images of Italians in American motion pictures and their contribution to popular culture." "Hollywood Italians covers the careers of dozens of stars including Rudolph Valentino, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, John Travolta, Sylvester Stallone, Marisa Tomei, James Gandolfini, and many others. In addition, the book reviews the work of such Italian American directors as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese." "In all, Hollywood Italians discusses scores of films with a concentration on the most important, including their literary and European-cinematic roots. The book is capped by a comprehensive examination of The Godfather and its two sequels, as well as the international television phenomenon The Sopranos."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book The Rise of the Crooners written by Michael Pitts and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2001-12-22 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Rudy Vallee—these cultural icons whose fame spanned all the important mass media, also played a vital role in the origin and development of the crooning tradition. Crooning represented one of the most important musical styles of the twentieth century, intermingling with jazz and fronting the big band craze of the thirties and forties. Crooners spurred the rise of radio as home staple and the Golden Age of film musicals. When commercial television became a viable commodity, crooners anchored perhaps the first TV programming innovation, the variety show. It took the cataclysmic aesthetic and cultural changes ushered in by rock 'n' roll in the 1950s to finally bring crooners down from their pedestal. The Rise of the Crooners examines the historical trends and events that led to the emergence of the crooning style. Ian Whitcomb, a successful popular music vocalist himself for almost 40 years, provides a personal perspective on this phenomenon. The lives and careers of six pioneers of the style—Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo, Gene Austin, Rudy Vallee, Johnny Marvin, and Nick Lucas—are covered at length. With the exception of one entry devoted to Crosby—possibly the greatest entertainer of the past century—these biographies (appended by lengthy bibliographies and discographies) are more thorough and up-to-date than any treatment in print about these seminal artists.
Download or read book The Everything Large Print Crossword Dictionary written by Charles Timmerman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-03-18 with total page 1549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even the best crossword puzzlers need a little help sometimes. And if you prefer your puzzles in large print, here's a crossword dictionary you don't need a magnifying glass to read! This easy-to-read dictionary is your ultimate resource for those tricky crossword dilemmas. It's packed to the brim with more than 60,000 answer words compiled by puzzlemaster Charles Timmerman. Featuring a range of entries, including: Contradict 4 deny 5 belie, rebut 6 negate, refute Cow chow 3 hay 4 feed 5 grass Football official 3 ref 8 linesman Nervous 4 edgy 5 goosy, tense 6 onedge, uneasy 9 illatease Literary governess 4 eyre Peeved 4 ired, sore 5 angry, cross 6 inapet 8 upinarms Remove 4 dele, doff, oust 5 erase, evict 8 takeaway Shakespearean forest 5 arden You won't miss a word--from the common to the complex--with The Everything Large-Print Crossword Dictionary. It's the perfect large-print crossword companion.
Download or read book Soundtrack Available written by Pamela Robertson Wojcik and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-03 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVEssays on film soundtracks composed of popular music (rather than the composed film score) both in relation to the films, and circulating separately on record./div
Download or read book Voices written by Nick Coleman and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Voices isn't just illuminating and thought–provoking and clever; it is exciting." —Roddy Doyle, author of The Commitments A personal exploration of what singing means and how it works, Voices is a book about our deepest, most telling relationships with music. Nick Coleman examines the act of singing not as a performance, but as a close, difficult moment of hopeful connection. What does it do to us, emotionally and psychologically, to listen hard and habitually to somebody else’s singing? Why is human song so essential to our lives? The book asks many other questions, too: Why did Jagger and Lennon sing like that (and not like this)? Billie, Janis, Amy: must the voices of anguish always dissolve into spectacle? What makes us turn again and again to a singing human voice? The history of postwar popular music is often told sociologically or in terms of musicological influence and innovation in style. Voices offers a different, intimate perspective. In ten discrete but cohering essays, Coleman tackles the arc of that history as an emotional experience with real psychological consequences. He writes about the voices that have affected the ways he feels about and understands the world—from Aretha Franklin to Amy Winehouse, Marvin Gaye to David Bowie. Ultimately, Voices is the story of what it is to listen and be moved—what it is to feel emotion.
Download or read book Crooning written by John Gregory Dunne and published by Zola Books. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Funny, outrageous, cynical, and spellbinding.”—People magazine. In this first-ever digital edition of John Gregory Dunne’s acclaimed collection Crooning, readers find evidence from the get-go confirming the writer’s reputation as one of the most clear-seeing, incisive observers of the American cultural and political scene. In sixteen sharp, distinctively voiced essays, Dunne profiles a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter who three decades later passed himself off as a young Chicano novelist; considers the Kennedy men and conservative William F. Buckley, takes us inside California’s labyrinthine water politics and criminal justice system, details the workings of the Los Angeles county morgue, and is on the ground observing in Jerusalem just weeks before the intifada enveloped the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1987. Here, too, are superbly entertaining accounts of the Hollywood star system and studio machine, Dunne drawing on two decades of experience as an L.A.-based journalist and fiction-writer with regular forays into screenwriting. He is candid and insightful about the business of writing and life of the dedicated writer as well. In “Laying Pipe,” Dunne chronicles the five-year experience of writing his epic novel The Red White and Blue. And in “Critical,” he focuses on book reviews and reviewers from his perspective as an author who, along with manifold strong notices, also received the occasional critical knock. He names names, and takes the opportunity to fire back at one of his critics. Early in Crooning, Dunne tells us that when he tires of the writing grind, he fantasizes about being a Johnny Mercer-like crooner, then reveals a moment later that he is tone deaf. The title, then, is playful - and in more than one way. Instead of writing sweet narrative melodies, Dunne built his career through work that exposes, challenges, thrums with opinion, and bristles with spiky, knowing humor. Download Crooning and dive into a book of provocative reportage, great stories, and witty, vigorous prose.
Download or read book Joep Peeters Discography written by Gerard Bielderman and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jazz and American Culture written by Michael Borshuk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers an entry point for understanding the comprehensive way this uniquely American artistic form has influenced literature, art, film, and other art forms, while also providing a cultural space for political commentary or social critique.
Download or read book The Resort written by Sol Stein and published by Untreed Reads. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cliffhaven--Magnificent new resort near Big Sur. Surrounded by redwoods. Guarded by oceanside cliffs. Protected from prying eyes. By reservation only. Cliffhaven--Founded by a man with very special interests, catering to a very special clientele. Margaret and Henry Brown, vacationing New Yorkers innocently driving down the sea-washed coast of California, are just the right sort of people. Cliffhaven--It has a spectacular entrance, a three-star restaurant, lavish accommodations--and no exit!
Download or read book The Ballad in American Popular Music written by David Metzer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to explore the ballad's history and emotional appeal, surveying seventy years of the genre in modern America.
Download or read book Saturday Review of Literature written by and published by . This book was released on 1952-07 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
