You know how it works, or rather how it used to work back in the day when the GASbook ruled the airwaves - or do you?
The songwriter, usually a Jewish or a Russian immigrant, writes a catchy melody, adds a lyric (or else knows a guy who has a way with words to form a team) and starts pestering all the music publishers in Tin Pan Alley. Eventually, he succeeds in getting his masterpiece published and before you know it, he's moved from Skid Row to Park Avenue and married an heiress.
Right?
Wrong!
The first thing our young tunesmith discovers is that 9 times out of 10 the moguls who make these decisions don't know a crotchet from a hat check girl!
So how does his/her song get published and become a smash hit?
Luck, fate, happy accident, maybe someone up there had sympathy with our composer.
Edward Allan Faine thinks so and he makes a strong case for 43 of some of the worlds most loved songs from 1918-1989 (and don't forget this is just book one!) that fate took a hand in guiding them to their destiny.
I'm not going to post any spoilers save to say that they range from Richard Whiting and Richard Egan's 1918 song Till We Meet Again (the discarded manuscript was rescued from a waste basket by a secretary) to Tom Petty and Full Moon Fever that, in 1989, almost didn't make it owing to a....read the book and find out for yourself!
Faine's style is humourous and perceptive. There's many a chuckle and a 'Well I never!' that, only those whose heart has never stood still will fail to utter. I'm already on to my second reading and picking up on other gems.
A cross section of artists and composers are in there. Jazzers, popsters, rockers who all had hits, often with unlikely items in even more unlikely circumstances.
There's also a lot of quotes from songwriters who go along with the theme of divine inspiration - melodies or lyrics that arrive out of the blue and decree that you are the one to introduce them to the world.
Like Faine's previous books* reviewed on this site, it's highly recommended and well worth reading - again and again.
Lance.
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