A masterful tribute to the father of the Great American Songbook
What exactly is American music? A century ago, long before rock & roll, hip-hop, or Americana, what constituted American music was much different than today. It tended to be a blending of European classical, Broadway show tunes, minstrelsy, ragtime, perhaps a bit of country and blues, and, of course, a healthy dollop of that relatively new sound known as jazz. Arguably, no one put all these elements together with the flair, finesse, elegance, and panache of George Gershwin.
, Felder weaves a compelling if not strictly linear narrative of Gershwin's life from a precocious street kid on NYC's Lower East Side, the youngest child of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, to his untimely death from an inoperable brain tumor at the staggeringly young age of 38. He died a wealthy man to be sure but one who was sadly unaware of the subsequent success and huge influence his music would have in the years to come.
Not immune to the harsh criticism that so often accompanies cutting-edge creativity in the arts, Felder explains how despondent Gershwin felt to read the scathing antisemitic invectives of auto tycoon Henry Ford on how Jews were sufficiently cunning to take lascivious African American"jungle" music, injecting it into the popular mainstream to corrupt the morals of unsuspecting citizens; and more personally, in describing Gershwin as a fraud for having come from the Lower East Side,...
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