Love Me Tender: The Stories Behind the World's Best-Loved Songs

by Max Cryer

Book Overview

In 1855, Miss Jane Ross transcribed the melody played by a piper at an Irish village fair. Had she not, the world would never have heard "Danny Boy." If Robert Burns had missed an old man's quavering... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0711229112
• ISBN13: 9780711229112
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Interesting

About: Cryer digs up the origins and legends of 40 songs Things I Thought Were Interesting: * The lyrics to Edelweiss were the last Oscar Hammerstein wrote before he died * Christopher Plummer (Captain Von Trapp) was overdubbed singing in The Sound of Music movie * The lyricist of Danny Boy never set foot in Ireland * Irving Berlin, who wrote White Christmas, had a three-week old son who died on Christmas Day * Mozart did not compose Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star * Neither God Save the Queen nor The Star Spangled Banner mention the nations they are the anthems of * Happy Birthday is protected by copyright in the U.S. until 2030 * Waltzing Matilda (which isn't a waltz) had its copyright expire in Australia in 1991, but is copyright in the U.S. until 2011, therefore at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Australia had to pay to use its own song Pros: Short chapters make for easy reading, well written. Cons: No citations of sources, many songs I have not heard are covered.

A TREASURY OF TUNEFUL TALES

You may just find yourself humming along as you're reading along in Love Me Tender: The Stories Behind the World's Best-Loved Songs. Writer, entertainer, broadcaster Max Cryer has a passion for plus thorough knowledge of popular music, and he shares both with us in the stories behind 40 of our top songs. The melodies spring from diverse backgrounds - folk songs, musical theatre, a particular recording or even as in the case of Danny Boy from the tune played by a piper at an Irish village fair in 1855. We find that contemporary songs such as "Moon River" and "Hello Dolly" as well as established favorites such as "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" and "Auld Lang Syne" have won the hearts and voices of millions. As many know, Andrew Lloyd Webber's fantastically popular musical "Cats" was inspired by a volume of poems by T. S. Eliot, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." Webber grew to know some of the Cat poems as a child when his mother read them to him. Much later, in 1977 Webber began to think about setting some of the verse to music. By 1980 this was done and he played them for Eliot's widow, Valerie, as it would be necessary to have her approval in order to turn the poems into a musical. She not only approved but gave Webber some fragments of Eliot's work, one of which was an eight line piece, a sad vignette about a once beautiful now aging cat, Grizabella, and eventually "Memory" was born. Cole Porter was, of course, one of our country's preeminent song writers leaving us a string of hits, including Begin the Beguine. He wrote this after seeing a troop of native dancers on an Indonesian island and remembering a performance he had seen by Martinique dancers who were doing a kind of slow rhumba. This composer found inspiration everywhere. So great was Porter's fame that upon his 1956 arrival in Spain the "Customs officer who inspected his passport, shrieked, `Cole Porter! Begin the Beguine", then kissed his fingers and began to sing the song." "Love Me Tender" is filled with such vignettes involving everyone from Marie Antoinette to Artie Shaw, Gracie Fields to Elvis Presley, and a multitude in between. You'll not miss a beat with this treasure of tuneful tales. Enjoy! Highly recommended. - Gail Cooke