Bill Reed

The Last Musical Hurrah Bill Reed

The Last Musical Hurrah: Jazz and Pop Singing and the Onslaught of Rock. The title alone should give you some idea of the subject matter. To elaborate just a bit, it is about the impact of the tsunami of rock and roll as it swept across the land circa 1955-'65 and all but obliterated the half-century of songwriting achievements of such as the Gershwins, Porter, Berlin, et al that had come before. A body of work that has since come to be called, collectively, The Great American Songbook. "There's scarcely a lemon in this 250-singer lot (circa 1955-'65. And, to think, they did it all without Auto-Tune. Thus-mid-20th Century-most of them were preparing themselves to become the next Stafford or Sinatra. It was unfathomable to them that the time would ever come when they'd have to do their own bookings and publicity, keep mailing lists, and release records on their own, etc. And yet . . ." The 250 singers alluded to in the above paragraph were, for the most part, very talented individuals. But there was only so much post-rock room in the cultural lifeboat and the vast majority of them sank without a trace after-at one and the same time-their first and last vinyl hurrahs. This book is their story i.e., entries on each of these vocalists; their backgrounds, the album in question and (whenever it was possible to ascertain) how their stories played out. This book contains 8,500 song titles.