Following up on last year's Serendipity Doo-Dah Book One, Edward Allan Faine once again provides the background to those 'True Stories of Musical Accidents'. Although not quite as jazzy as the previous volume, there is, nevertheless, plenty to interest those who love popular song whether it be by Jerome Kern, Sammy Cahn and Jules Styne or Phil Collins and Madonna. Plus, with Faine writing, jazz is never far away.
But the genre is immaterial, it's the songs and the stories behind them as well as the author's own input that makes this such interesting reading.
Again, I'm not going to throw in any spoilers. Instead, I'll give you a few questions, but you'll have to read the book to find out the answers.
Which Broadway showstopper was rejected as a beer commercial before achieving immortality on the Great White Way?
Which instrumental hits began life as 'B-sides'?
Which hit songs benefitted from drastic changes to the original tempo?
And lots more.
Having led a sheltered jazz life, many of the later songs and artists were but names to me and this in itself made the book a further voyage of discovery.
I don't know if Mr. Faine has a third volume in the pipeline but if he has it's already on my bucket list.
Lance
Edward Allan Faine: Serendipity Doo-Dah Book Two. IM Press.
ISBN 978-0-9857952-3-8
Amazon.
Amazon.
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