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The Sounds of Music: Early Recording Artists
by Charles Marowitz
ISBN: 978-0-9820540-4-8
Review in The Sound Record
Singing Along With Marowitz Book Review by Peter Byrne, from Swans (ISSN: 1554-4915, published April 20, 2009)
[Marowitz, Charles: "The Sounds of Music, Early Recording Artists" -
World Audience, Inc., N.Y.C., 2008, ISBN: 978-0-9820540-4-8, illustrated,
268 pages, $25.]
"The university soothsayers now tell us in numbers and long words that high
and popular culture are at last joining hands. But were they ever really
strangers? The ongoing career of Charles Marowitz would seem to say no.
"He worked with Peter Brook on the latter's epoch making King Lear and
afterwards in The Theatre of Cruelty season. Since the first put in a good
word for Lear's corrupt daughters and the second relayed the ideas of
Antonin Artaud who died mad, this was hardly sailing down the mainstream.
But Marowitz had no intention of "setting up shop in Brook's shadow" and
stepped aside to continue the experiments he had begun with his In-Stage
group at the British Drama League. This led in 1968 to the founding of The
Open Space, the first permanent theatre in London committed to Ezra
Pound's watchword, "make it new."
"Marowitz again fought his way up river in Confessions of a Counterfeit
Critic: A London Theatre Notebook 1958-71. On the one hand, the young,
earnest author invokes European high-art dramatists to assail British
staidness. But on the other hand -- and this is the point -- he never
ignores the triumphs of popular entertainment. In Durrenmatt's The
Physicists, Marowitz thought Bela Lugosi would have been ideal in a main
role. The best review in the book is of Spike Milligan, the manic,
improvising comic who, in the dull Oblomov, "threads the play like a
scarlet ribbon weaving a crazy pattern around drab burlap."
"Two decades later in Alarums & Excursions: Our Theatres in the 90s,
Marowitz is still paddling his own canoe controcorrente. But in that
truculent collection of reviews in defense of serious theatrical art,
popular artists keep turning up for praise. Jerome Robbins "created half a
dozen new milestones." Frank Sinatra has an "effortless, ethereal manner"
and an "ability to reaffirm the ordinariness of simple human sentiments."
Marowitz applauds Jerry Lewis for whom "if it wasn't outrageous, it wasn't
comedy." George Burns is "class not crass."
"Meanwhile, Marowitz kept writing plays that, however new in the way he
developed them, took off from authors heard of by even the middlebrow
public: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Conan Doyle, Brecht, and the Parisian
boulevardiers. On the brow map, Marowitz never really settled down at one
address, low, high, or middle. A constant in his criticism goes some way
to explain it. He's struck with awe and respect for what he (and, I
believe, Kenneth Tynan) called high-definition performance or supreme,
one-off artistry applied to material from anywhere on the scale of
popularity. It could be Laurence Olivier in Oedipus or Lenny Bruce on a
good night, Glenda Jackson in Chekhov or Don Rickles, "shtick-laden,
post-Catskillian, and Vegasized," but making Marowitz laugh..."
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Review in Malibu Surfside News
“An indispensable reference book – well-written, too, unlike so many of those arid list books assembled by nerdy, if useful, aficionados. This is, refreshingly, about songs and singers rather than matrix numbers and record labels. I know of no other book that gathers together so professionally and humanely such an array of pioneer recording artists, all deserving to be brought back to life. In the Marowitz magic hands a musty curtain is ripped down to reveal an army of fresh gleaming songsters who, with strong melodies and barrel chests, are ready to do battle with today's boastful hip-hoppers and slushy ballad peddlers.”
– Ian Whitcomb, After The Ball, Irving Berlin & Ragtime America, Rock Odyssey
Press Release
Click to read our current (9th) issue of audience!
“A delightful collection of stories and little known facts about the great recording personalities of the past. It deserves a special place on every personality collector's shelf.”
– Milt Larsen, “Hear Them Again – For the First Tim”, CRN Radio. Founder, The Magic Castle
“Listening to old 78s is a most enjoyable experience for those of us who love the music, the era and the records themselves. But an intimate knowledge of the artists who made those recordings allows for a much greater appreciation of the music. The biographical vignettes in Marowitz's book serve to illuminate these fascinating personalities within their own cultural and historical settings. A very entertaining work!”
– Kurt Nauck, owner & director of Nauck’s Vintage Records
“Charles Marowitz promises to analyse and celebrate the music and musicians from the early years of recording, but he does far more than provide us merely with fond criticism and nostalgia. He documents the work of legends such as Billy Murray, Eva Tanguay, Fannie Brice and Van and Schenck but also finds space for Britishers such as cross-dressing Vesta Tilley and American-style vocalist Elsie Carlisle. He discusses groups, such as the Brox and Boswell Sisters, and also non-familial groupings such as the Revelers whoe understanding of rhythmic style is lassic. This remarkable volume, which does not fall easily into any obvious category, interweaves the development of early 20th century entertainment as exemplified by the phonograph record with stories on a very select group of artists, and includes the most detailed, personal history of he Edison Phonoigraph that I have ever read. It is an affectionate and intelligent tribute to an age when recording meant a cylinder or a disc and not a CD or an internet download.”
– Anthony Slide, The Vaudevillians, The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Silent Players, & etc.
“A worthy collection historic show business biographies that chronicles the careers of entertainers and recording artists covering the days of minstrels, ragtime, jazz and early swing. Emphasis is rightly given to past icons including Sophie Tucker, Eva Tanguay, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice and Al Jolson. However, I was especially pleased to find a few overlooked performers such as Al Bernard and Irving Kaufman included here. This is an interesting and informative Read.”
– Jim Bedoian, producer, ‘Take Two’ Records
“Today's wide wonderful world of recorded music first took shape in the early years of the 20th century, long before the Internet, TV, or even radio. Charles Marowitz tells the fascinating stories of the pioneering singers, musicians and comedians who established the phonograph as the world's first mass audio medium.”
– Dr. Demento, Syndicated Radio Personality
The music of America was finitely captured for the first time in the late l9th century when Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph made music tangibly accessible bringing the voices of celebrated artists into the parlors of millions of American homes. In the early years of the 20th century, this musical boom was the equivalent of the computerized revolution of our own era. For the first time, all of America could play and re-play the recorded ‘sounds of music’, a boon which had been denied to past generations. THE SOUNDS OF MUSIC: EARLY RECORDING ARTISTS is a personalized view of some of the most charismatic artists of this fertile period of American music.
The book provides sharp and concise profiles of legendary artists such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Billy Murray, Ada Jones, Sophie Tucker, Fannie Brice, Eva Tanguay, Nora Bayes, Rudy Vallee, The Boswell Sisters and dozens of other outstanding recording artists of the period. It also fills in the social milieu in which these artists rose to prominence reflecting the spirit of both the roaring Twenties and the turbulent Thirties. It is a book for anyone who has ever fallen in love with a ballad, blues, torch-song or novelty number out of the great American Song Book.
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