[Dixielandjazz] "Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers" Reviewed

[Robert Ringwald]

"A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers." By Will Friedwald. Pantheon.
811 pp. $45.
by Dennis Drabelle
Washington Post, November 7, 2010
In this mammoth volume, jazz critic Will Friedwald does for jazz and pop vocalists
what David Thomson has done so brilliantly for the movies in his "New Biographical
Dictionary of Film." As with Thomson, the organization of Friedwald's book invites
readers to flip to their favorites, and I foxtrotted off with Peggy Lee. Allotting
her eight double-columned pages, Friedwald starts off by dividing all "great American
female singers" into two groups: jazz singers such as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday
and Ella Fitzgerald, and pop singers such as Judy Garland, Doris Day and Rosemary
Clooney. He continues: "But there's only one singer who can be said to truly belong
to both groups: to be considered one of the all-time pop superstars as well as genuine
jazz royalty." She is, of course, Peggy Lee. This is both incisive and useful --
providing a way to ground in reason one's instinctive admiration for Lee's ability
to make almost any kind of song her own.
The author also acts as a consumer guide, steering the reader toward particular songs
or albums. Interested in hearing "scat" singing at its best? Ella Fitzgerald is the
performer without peer, but her list of recordings is dauntingly long. Friedwald
has the answer, however, sending you to "the single most exciting record of Fitzgerald's
career... Lullabies of Birdland.... Fitzgerald's swing and her time are perfect --
astonishingly so, almost superhuman: You can't find a metronome with time this good.
That's probably the key reason why her scatting uninterrupted for three to five minutes
is so vastly entertaining." "Vastly entertaining," for that matter, isn't a bad label
to stick on Friedwald's book.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
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