White Christmas
The Story of a Song
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- 2,99 €
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- 2,99 €
Publisher Description
"Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote." Irving Berlin, 1942
A biography of the single most important record in the history of popular music
A vividly written narrative about the world's best-loved popular song, White Christmas provides both the story behind the making of Irving Berlin's most memorable tune and a rich cultural history of the America that embraced it.
When Irving Berlin first conceived the song "White Christmas", he envisioned it as "a throwaway" – a satirical novelty number for a vaudeville-style stage review. By the time Bing Crosby introduced the song to the world in the winter of 1942, it was a yuletide ballad that would become the world's all-time top-selling and most frequently recorded song. Berlin, the Russian-Jewish immigrant who became America's greatest pop troubadour, had written his magnum opus – what one commentator has called a "holiday Moby-Dick" – a timeless song that resonates with some of the deepest strains in American culture: yearning for an idealised New England past, belief in the magic of the "merry and bright" Christmas season, longing for the sanctuaries of home and hearth. Today the song endures not just as an icon of the national Christmas celebration but as the artistic and commercial peak of the golden age of popular song arising from the Jewish-American assimilation, and a symbol of the values and strivings of the World War II generation.
‘White Christmas’ is both a period page-turner, tracing the story of the song's making amid the vibrant world of mid-century Broadway and Hollywood, and a chronicle of the song's legacy through today, when Berlin's masterpiece endures as a secular hymn.
Reviews
'Intelligent, illuminating and entertaining'
Sunday Telegraph
'Rosen's book is a sheer delight, fizzing with ideas and subtle analysis, and bubbling with imaginative research, character and colour.' Scotsman
'White Christmas was a by-blow, a throwaway song, but its story is the story of American popular music: joyful and sad, meretricious and profound, open-handed and grasping – all at once.'
Sunday Herald
'Entertaining and perceptive'
The Times
'Seasonal and enjoyable'
Observer
About the author
Jody Rosen lives in New York and is a regular contributor to Salon.com and The New York Times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With its references to glistening treetops and sleigh bells in the snow, Irving Berlin's dreamy ballad has become a monstrously popular classic. Since its 1942 debut (softly crooned by Bing Crosby), artists from Doris Day to the Flaming Lips have recorded their own versions of the tune; it's become the world's most frequently recorded song. Music journalist Rosen offers a perfect, compact book chronicling the song's birth, initial reception and rise to popularity, simultaneously giving readers an understanding of the iconic Berlin and 1940s American popular culture. The prolific songwriter couldn't read or write music, yet composed continually, using his "musical secretary," Helmy Kresa, to pen the songs he wrote on the piano. Berlin introduced "White Christmas" to Kresa on January 8, 1940. Rosen explains the song's little-known introduction (which sets the narrator in California, longing for cold weather); offers interpretations of the song's escapist appeal (like so many popular songs of its time, it doesn't acknowledge the Great Depression's hardships); and comments on the prevalence of Jewish composers in that era's popular song business (Berlin himself was an Eastern European Jewish immigrant). The unsentimental writing and thorough research Rosen draws on such sources as Berlin's family and music scholars make this a delightful testament to the power of one simple song. and 2000'sStrange Fruit, about the tune Billie Holiday made famous, there seems to be a burgeoning category on the rise: American song biographies. They're a terrific lens through which to view an era, and Rosen's book should be especially popular, given its holiday angle.