HOUSE THAT GEORGE BUILT, THE（ISBN=） 英文原版

　　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.Sheed also illuminates the unique gifts of the great
jazz songsters Hoagy Carmichael and Duke Ellington, conjuring up
the circumstances of their creativity and bringing back the thrill
of what it was like to hear “Georgia on My Mind” or “Mood Indigo”
for the first time. The Golden Age of song sparked creative
breakthroughs in both Broadway musicals and splashy Hollywood
extravaganzas. Sheed vividly recounts how Cole Porter, Richard
Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer spread the melodic wealth
to stage and screen. Popular music was, writes Sheed, “far and away
our greatest contribution to the world’s art supply in the
so-called American Century.” Sheed hung out with some of the great
artists while they were still writing-and better than anyone, he
knows great music, its shimmer, bite, and exuberance. Sparkling
with wit, insight, and the grace notes of wonderful songs, “The
House That George Built “is a heartfelt, intensely personal
portrait of an unforgettable era. A delightfully charming, funny,
and most illuminating portrait of songwriters and the Golden Age of
American Popular Song. Mr. Sheed’s carefully chosen depictions and
anecdotes recapture that amazingly creative period, a moment in
time in which I was so fortunate to be surrounded by all that
magic.”-Margaret Whiting “From the Hardcover edition.”