| Title | : | Reading Lyrics |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0375400818 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780375400810 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 736 |
| Publication | : | First published November 21, 2000 |
Reading Lyrics begins with the first masters of the colloquial phrase, including George M. Cohan (“Give My Regards to Broadway”), P. G. Wodehouse (“Till the Clouds Roll By”), and Irving Berlin, whose versatility and career span the period from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to “Annie Get Your Gun” and beyond. The Broadway musical emerges as a distinct dramatic form in the 1920s and 1930s, its evolution propelled by a trio of lyricists—Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart—whose explorations of the psychological and emotional nuances of falling in and out of love have lost none of their wit and sophistication. Their songs, including “Night and Day,” “The Man I Love,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” have become standards performed and recorded by generation after generation of singers. The lure of Broadway and Hollywood and the performing genius of such artists as Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Ethel Merman inspired a remarkable array of talented writers, including Dorothy Fields (“A Fine Romance,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”), Frank Loesser (“Guys and Dolls”), Oscar Hammerstein II (from the groundbreaking “Show Boat” of 1927 through his extraordinary collaboration with Richard Rodgers), Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, Andy Razaf, Noël Coward, and Stephen Sondheim.
Reading Lyrics also celebrates the work of dozens of superb craftsmen whose songs remain known, but who today are themselves less known—writers like Haven Gillespie (whose “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” may be the most widely recorded song of its era); Herman Hupfeld (not only the composer/lyricist of “As Time Goes By” but also of “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” and “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba”); the great light versifier Ogden Nash (“Speak Low,” “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” and, yes, “The Sea-Gull and the Ea-Gull”); Don Raye (“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Mister Five by Five,” and, of course, “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet”); Bobby Troup (“Route 66”); Billy Strayhorn (not only for the omnipresent “Lush Life” but for “Something to Live For” and “A Lonely Coed”); Peggy Lee (not only a superb singer but also an original and appealing lyricist); and the unique Dave Frishberg (“I’m Hip,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Van Lingo Mungo”).
The lyricists are presented chronologically, each introduced by a succinct biography and the incisive commentary of Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball.
Reading Lyrics Reviews
-
Before the Beatles, British people gaped in awe at the outpouring of pop songs from America. We all thought you HAD to be American or be Noel Coward to write a song, there was some kind of law. But very occasionally, a British song, one that wasn't by Noel Coward, crept out into the limelight. This is my favourite pre-Beatles British song, a song regretting the end of an affair, which as someone wrote was "the kind we would all like to be regretting".
THESE FOOLISH THINGS (1936)
Oh will you never let me be?
Oh will you never set me free?
The ties that bound us are still around us
There´s no escape that I can see
And still those little things remain
That bring me happiness or pain
A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground's painted swings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me, I somehow knew that this had to be
The winds of March that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings - but who´s to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
Gardenia perfume lingering on a pillow
Wild strawberries only seven francs a kilo
And still my heart has wings
The park at evening when the bell has sounded
The Isle de France with all the gulls around it
The beauty that is spring
These foolish things
Remind me of you
I know that this was bound to be
These things have haunted me
For you´ve entirely enchanted me
The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations
Silk stockings thrown aside, dance invitations
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
First daffodils and long excited cables
And candlelight on little corner tables
And still my heart has wings
The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
How strange, how sweet to find you still
These things are dear to me
That seem to bring you so near to me
The scent of smouldering leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
Music by Jack Strachey and Harry Link; lyrics by Holt Marvell, which was a nom de plume for Eric Maschwitz, a scriptwriter for the BBC.
I would have liked to append the brilliantly cut-glass performance by Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson from the 1930s - he was a popular black cabaret singer from Grenada who sang in this extraordinarily posh upper class accent, enunciating every syllable and throbbing with vibrato like an elegant dinner gong, but Youtube not surprisingly can't find it. So here's a very camp version by an amazingly young Bryan Ferry here - not as good, but not too shabby. He sings nearly all the words, and there are a lot of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klz1MO... -
Reading Lyrics is just an outrageously disappointing book, principally in that the only editorial activity involved here seems to have been selection. The title is horribly misleading as there is no critical assessment of lyrical art or the works contained herein, nor are the selected works representative of the 20th Century as a whole, nor are they presented in chronological order, nor is any real maturation or evolution presented. What we have here is rather a book of arbitrarily-selected lyrics (mostly of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Golden Age Hollywood musical fare), from around 1911 ("Alexander's Rag Time Band") to around 1960 or so. Yes, the book ends with "One" from the mid-'70s A Chorus Line, but that's a token selection as the editors profess to wish to stop their lyrical odyssey before pop and Broadway styles change. Again, unless the editors are referring to the advent of amplification over any other change, this statement is patent nonsense, and probably nonsense even by my amplification straw man since the electric guitar (to name but one specific musical innovation of the 20th Century) was introduced back in the 1930s. In other words, the "Century's Finest Lyrics" actually covers a span only half that length.
Let me be a bit more specific for those who think I sink to hyperbole. Here we have more than 1,000 lyrics, grouped by author (including M. Miscellaneous) and within each authorial section, alphabetically by title. The authors themselves are crudely assembled in a kind of chronological order, but with lyricists like Irving Berlin, Noel Coward, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein enjoying careers spanning 20-30 years, these works might as well have been written on index cards and thrown down a stairwell. As mentioned, the lyrics are given no context beyond a short blurb (one paragraph) about the lyricist which one might improve upon by typing the name into the search field of Ask.com.
There's no excuse for this editorial sloth, as these editors have published far more comprehensive and wholly chronologically structured books of lyrics for Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, and Ira Gershwin (and possibly one or more others). How did they convince a publisher that readers or researchers would want this volume to seek out a mere 10-15 samples from their respectively prolific output (for a bit of context that this book lacks, I note here that Gershwin wrote over 700 songs, of which only about 300 were published during his lifetime... all of which are available in a single, separate and much more ideal book assembled by these self-same editors that also includes Ira's own autobiographical musings and philosophy)? Nor do we lack for the works of other prominent lyricists like Alan Jay Lerner and Steven Sondheim who have also been treated to full and comprehensive, separate publications. For those lesser-known stars of the swinging Sinatra firmament, there's always... the internet, the ultimate compendium of decontextualized information, which I believe was well under way to mainstream use by the time this book was published in 2000.
Don't get me wrong, the contents of the book (the lyrics themselves) are fun to read, but must be appreciated wholly on their own merits as this book does nothing really to add to their independent value. Still and all, I really hope that a copy of Reading Lyrics finds its way into our nations' conservatories, so that it might fulfill a useful function... propping up wobbly piano benches and as impromptu booster seats for short-legged musicians. -
TITLE: Reading Lyrics: More Than 1,000 of the Century's Finest Lyrics--a Celebration of Our Greatest Songwriters, a Rediscovery of Forgotten Masters, and an Appreciation of an Extraordinary, Popular Art Form
by Robert Gottlieb [2000] (Hardcover)
Added 4/29/11
I treasure this book. The title above explains all.
I purchased it soon after it was published in the year 2000.
I grew up in an era which appreciated the songs in the book. I enjoy browsing through the pages. I appreciate the cleverness of the lyrics and the writers who conceived them.
See a lyric-related Goodreads thread at:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5... -
I've had this book for years, I just wanted to add it so I could point out how handy it is if you need to sing "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" to your contrarian three year old.
-
An anthology of a thousand or so song lyrics from some of the most celebrated American and English lyricists of their time. The songs, chosen from shows, movies, and the popular canon of the time and now considered classics, help to reveal the lyricist who penned each of them.
Presented chronologically, and including a brief biography of the lyricist, it’s a tribute to the lyricists and to their enduring words. Readers can research the work of a specific composer, or of a particular time, or of a particular genre. While some of the composers may not be household names, readers will discover that their songs are well-known and often performed.
Read for the poetry of the lyrics, read for the uniqueness of the art form. Read for the joy of discovering these familiar lyrics all over again.
Highly recommended. -
Not a book one sits down to read all the way through. It's a boat-ton of song lyrics.
It's awesome. -
This sounds wonderful! I was just today admiring Cole Porter's lyrics for "You're the Top":
You're the top!
You're the Coliseum
You're the top!
You're the Louvre Museum.
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet
A Shakespeare sonnet,
You're Mickey Mouse! -
I actually thought I would read this. Then I checked it out and saw it was 1000 pages or whatever. Riiiiiight.
-
Excellent resource! This book really helps vocalists and instrumentalists understand a lyricist through their body of work.
