Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty

The House That George Built: With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty

Sheed, Wilfrid

Paperback

General MusicPop/RockMusic Reference

ISBN10: 0812970187
ISBN13: 9780812970180
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: May 13 2008
Pages: 368
Weight: 0.62
Height: 0.81 Width: 5.23 Depth: 8.02
Language: English
From Irving Berlin to Cy Coleman, from Alexander's Ragtime Band to Big Spender, from Tin Pan Alley to the MGM soundstages, the Golden Age of the American song embodied all that was cool, sexy, and sophisticated in popular culture. For four glittering decades, geniuses like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen ran their fingers over piano keys, enticing unforgettable melodies out of thin air. Critically acclaimed writer Wilfrid Sheed uncovered the legends, mingled with the greats, and gossiped with the insiders. Now he's crafted a dazzling, authoritative history of the era that tripled the world's total supply of singable tunes.

It began when immigrants in New York's Lower East Side heard black jazz and blues-and it surged into an artistic torrent nothing short of miraculous. Broke but eager, Izzy Baline transformed himself into Irving Berlin, married an heiress, and embarked on a string of hits from Always to Cheek to Cheek. Berlin's spiritual godson George Gershwin, in his brief but incandescent career, straddled Tin Pan Alley and Carnegie Hall, charming everyone in his orbit. Possessed of a world-class ego, Gershwin was also generous, exciting, and utterly original. Half a century later, Gershwin love songs like Someone to Watch Over Me, The Man I Love, and Love Is Here to Stay are as tender and moving as ever.

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