Frankie Laine Books

This book isn't your typical biography. It's much better! Craig is a very open, honest person as he takes you through his life's triumphs and tragedies. His love for his friends, family, and especially, Frankie Laine, are very admirable as well. As you read it, you come to know that if you're lucky enough to be a friend of Craig's, you're a friend for life.
As you read the book, you see how Craig's hero, Frankie Laine, comes to be a true, trusted friend over the years. And it all started with a phone call, asking if he could meet Frankie just to shake his hand! How many people can say that about their hero?
One of the bonuses of the book is the photos from Craig's personal collection that you won't see anywhere else!
After reading Craig's book you'll come to realize there aren't too many people out there like Craig, and there aren't too many stars out their like Frankie was.

Have you ever wanted to pick up the phone and arrange to meet with you favorite celebrity?

That's exactly what author Craig Cronbaugh did. With barely enough money to pay his bus fare, this 29-year old drummer from Iowa, set out on a cross-country bus trip in 1985 to meet with singing legend, Frankie Laine. His story provides a revealing glimpse into the life and personality of this musical giant, and should be a much treasured volume for Frankie Laine fans.

But the real strong point in this book is the story of Craig Cronbaugh himself. Craig reveals himself through his pages as a far more real human being than the authors any autobiographies I've ever read -- perhaps because he isn't a celebrity. His trials and triumphs are experienced as those of a close friend you grew up with.

As Craig's life interweaves with Frankie Laine's over the years, we're treated to an intimate exploration of the role that "heroes" can play in our lives.

As an added bonus, the book contains 20 pages of pictures -- including several previously unpublished snapshots of Frankie Laine, and exclusive quotes from Teresa Brewer, Connie Haines, Gene Pitney, Jo Stafford, Lucy Marlow and, of course, Frankie Laine.

Got "When Jolson Was King" today. What a disappointment. It's the kind of book you can read straight through at one sitting. Not because it's so engrossing, but because there's so little there.

I had hoped for a history of the Jolson era, placing him and his achievements in context and including comments by those who were there. Instead there were often entire (two or three page) chapters on peripherally related people or places without even a relevant Jolson citation. The writing is uninspired and often in need of proof-reading. There are short semi-biographies of Jolson contemporaries, often including only a sentence or two of quotes concerning Jolson. Plus many pages devoted to contemporary Jolson Tribute Artists who are well intentioned and complimentary, never actually met the man.

Sorry, but it's a waste of money.

When Jolson Was King: Sittin' On Top Of The World by musical historian and biographer Richard Grudens is the engaging life story of the life and remarkable rise to fame of world famous actor, singer and entertainer Al Jolson. When Jolson Was King showcases Jolson's wonderful career, including his personal and professional relationships with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Patty Andrews, Jack Benny, George Jessel and so many more figures in the Hollywood of his day. When Jolson Was King is very strongly recommended reading for its complete and entertaining coverage of Al Jolson's inspiring life, and a welcome addition to personal, academic, and community library Theatre/Cinema Studies reference and biography collections.

Richard Grudens has written an entertaining and informative (must read) book for anyone interested in the legendary, Al Jolson "The World's Greatest Entertainer".

Even the seasoned Jolson fan who has read all of the biographies and discographies of their idol will find this engaging portrait of the incomparable Jolson. Richard Grudens patented profiling give a well-rounded view of Jolson as seen by those who knew him and were influenced by him. This book could also be subtitled "Jolson for Dummies" as it illustrated the appeal that Jolson still holds for fans worldwide who weren't even born when he departed this earth in 1950. Grudens goes further than other authors by capturing the legacy of Jolson.

I am the author and can understand why the last reviewer, who expected something different, was disappointed. My point of view was to provide a novice's guide to Jolson and his times, not the detailed day by day life story. The book contains many facets of Jolson' career including those around him, his competition, employers, and comments from those he inspired enough to form their own careers, the issue of minstrel, blackface performers, fabled stories of the famed Friar's Club,a chapter of the infamouos Shubert Brothers, and chapters covering Jolson's experiences in film, radio and his extensive USO travels. Covered too are vignettes of the theaters in which Jolson performed, and of those great theatrical competitors like the Barrymore's and where they were voicing their talents while Jolson was pulling them in at the Winter Garden,and a full feature on Jolson's films from the first talkie, The Jazz Singer to his famed bio-pics The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again. Included too are full acknowledgments of the songwriters who provided the great songs for Jolson to perform, as well as a treatise of vaudeville and burlesque of the times. As Kathryn Crosby, Mrs. Bing Crosby, commented on the book today, " The book is encylopedic. In addition to Jolson, it offers insights into the lives of four generations of leading entertainers, writers, and producers. We are also vouchsafed milestones in the development of the cinema, radio and television."

This book is a MUST for Frankie Laine fans.

It's full of information on the life and times of one of our all time greatest song stylists.

Although this isn't directly addressed in the book, Frankie Laine's career (72 years and counting) is itself an overview of 20th century American music. From his childhood inspiration by Al Jolson (music's first superstar), through his introduction to the Jazz world of the 1930s & 40s, his own years of superstardom in the late 40s/early 50s, to his forthcoming album OLD MAN JAZZ (appropriately title, as he's now 89 years old), Frankie Laine has been an integral part of it all.

As the first "Blue-eyed Soul singer," he played a seminal role in the switch-over from Big Band to the Golden Age of vocalists, and ultimately (if inadvertently) helped paved the way for the Rock era. Always experimenting, his records range from jazz, blues, folk, pop, cowboy songs, country and even some rock and roll.

(That and the fact that he's the best damn singer that ever was.)

Laine's book is written in an easygoing, entertaining style, and if it has one fault, it's that at 228 pages it only whets one's appetite for more.

The author says she was a great fan of her parents music, mostly teeny bopper early '60's stuff and she tries to draw some magnificent relationship between the music of that time and her own desire for a fairy tale existence.
If you don't fall asleep reading this trite, i'll buy you a nickel coke.
Gino

It'a an ambitious look with a complicated thesis and perhaps only a really theoretically comfortable writer might have pulled it off, someone like Greil Marcus or the late Lillian Roxon for example. Basically we have been led to believe that pop music entered a steep decline after Elvis joined the army and before the Liverpool invasion of December 1963. Schoemer argues that it was not as bad as all that, which isn't that much of a thesis, but it's interesting to think about. She reproduces a typical top 100 pop list for a week in 1959, and a mere survey of the list proves her very point that American pop music, even in what was supposedly the worst of times, had a richness and a depth and a freshness that you just can't associate with the second rate.

Wasn't it CS Lewis said that the health of a country depends on the richness and multiplicity of its minor writers--not its great superstars, but the everyday writers in the background? Schoemer has something of the sort to prove here, and yet her book lacks the requisite concision and force to make its case. Two huge problems get in the way. Number one, her own personal saga (and her problems with her mother) might be the single dullest storyline of any work of creative non fiction of the past 20 years. Reading this book, you just can't believe she held down a professional job (music critic at NEWSWEEK?) for she comes across as a self-obsessed blogger.

Problem number two, is that she decides to hone in on seven pop stars of the period, which might have been an OK strategy, had she been able to bring even one iota of insight into any of them. Patti Page comes off best, but Schoemer's just not prepared enough to do a proper interview. Patronizing isn't the word. She wastes their time with her ill-defined "Tell me what you meant to girls of my mother's generation" questions. It could have been a really good book, instead it's a great pretender.

I picked this book up because I'm a closet fan of this kind of music (I actually own a couple of Pat Boone LPs). I wound up a fan of Karen Schoemer, the reformed rock critic whose wry, witty manner brings both an off-beat look at the other side of '50s music and a writer who weaves interesting, honest memories with the interviews (and aren't memories what vintage music's all about?).
Karen grew up in plush New York suburbs and saw the grit of classic rock (Springsteen especially) as an escape from both sterile surroundings and her parents' messy divorce. Yet through many years as a free-lance rock critic for Newsweek and the New York Times, she never forgot the white-bread '50s pop hits that somehow stayed with her even after countless interviews with punk and grunge types. So she chose to embark on a quest for meaning in her life through meetings with stars from her mom's (and my mom's) generation. To my delight, the formula worked.
Seven '50s stars made Karen's cut, with the "holy grail" in the form of, oddly enough, Connie Francis- whom she finally meets at her retirement home in South Florida. She also talked to big-band era singers- Frankie Laine, Patti Page, even the all-
but-forgotten Georgia Gibbs. Pat Boone, mentioned earlier, proves to be irrepressible, while two minor teen idols- Fabian and Tommy Sands- fill out the collection. In all seven pieces, Karen's a participant, not an observer. This may turn purists off, but she's very entertaining and has surprising twists in both the interviews and listening. Sands, for instance, was best-known as Nancy Sinatra's (short-lived) husband; his only huge hit, "Teenage Crush", sounds what she calls "grotesque" yet once Karen hears Tommy's uneasy renditions of Sinatra-type standards, she's unexpectedly moved.
That's the essence of "Great Pretenders"- the discovery of real musical and emotional nuggets in a framework that doesn't sound too promising. "Give me more bad music"? "Connie was a virgin!" "Patti Page: for those who thought Ella Fitzgerald was a little too taxing." Yes, Karen sounds like a snide know-it-all, but she's better than that. There's real warmth here as she appreciates this music for what it was- and how, after so many years, it can win over even a wannabe hipster.
"Great Pretenders" isn't your average book of rock criticism; it's not a memory-lane piece; it isn't chick-lit either. It's part musical autobiography, part road trip, and all Karen Schoemer- a woman you'll either hate (if you want nostalgia) or, like me, you'll enjoy for her spunk. Whoever said "I hate spunk" never met her- and the soundtrack's great (if cheesy) too!
BTW- I always loved Pat Boone's "Speedy Gonzales".

Through the first 30 pages of this book, I was rolling right along with the author's premise and intrigued by her point of view. Then came this: " . . . jazz coronetist Sidney Bechet." Now I suppose one could have meant "clarinetist", or even may have mistakenly thought Bechet played cornet, or even conflated the two, but from that point, I found it difficult to take seriously anything in the book, given either the author's or editor's carelessness in regard to this point. Furthermore, I was constantly distracted by mental images of someone trying to play a coronet: can't blow into it, so I guess you'd have to bang it like a tambourine (which this pair would probably render as 'trampoline.')Hardly a book goes by in which you can't find some egregious editorial error of this sort. One would think Simon & Schuster could pay enough to obtain competent editorial help. As for Ms. Schoemer, as a would-be music critic of the stature to which she aspires in these pages, she simply should have known better.

As noted elsewhere in these reviews, instances of this sort keep cropping up, and I found my interest (and Ms. Schoemer's credibility) slowly dwindling. Too bad---given the subject and Ms. Schoemer's interesting take on it, this could have been a pretty good read; as for me, I'll just go play my coronet.

Normally I am caught up in books discussing much more serious subjects. It was time for a break. So when a friend told me he had just finished up Karen Schoemer's "Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair With 50's Pop Music" and offered me his copy I simply could not resist. In fact, I had almost purchased the book myself a couple of months ago. It was a book I had high hopes for and I wound up reading it in a single day. As one who has been collecting popular music for more than 40 years I hoped to gain some additional insight into the music of the early 1950's. Very little has been written about this period and much of what you do find is extremely negative. Most of the so called "enlightened" rock critics immediately dismiss the music of such artists as Pat Boone, Connie Francis and Patti Page as trite and superficial. Yet this music certainly struck a chord with millions of Americans in the early fifties. Karen Schoemer wanted to find out why and she certainly seemed to have the credentials. She wanted to know why her parents, her mom in particular, loved this stuff. So she decided to write a book about this era. She began this project back in 1999 and admittedly struggled with the concept over the next several years. In the end she wound up interviewing seven of the era's biggest stars. She chatted with Patti Page and Frankie Laine, Georgia Gibbs, Fabian, Tommy Sands and two of the biggest stars of early 50's pop Connie Francis and Pat Boone. Much to her surprise she discovered that most of these folks were anything but the stuffy, uptight people she expected to find. As of matter of fact she really did like most of them. And as her work on the book proceeded she found herself enjoying this music even more. She suddenly decided it was OK to enjoy this stuff despite what the so-called critics thought of it. Not everything she listened to had to be hip or loud or socially relevant. Karen Schoemer had discovered what made this music so attractive to her parents generation.
"Great Pretenders" is a mighty strange book. I craved to learn more about the songs and about the artists Karen had a chance to speak with. Instead I came away frustrated that I did not find out as much about these people and their careers as I had expected. In general, I found "Great Pretenders" to be pretty unfocused at times and I certainly could have done without the frequent references to the authors personal life. For a project in the works for 7 years I would have to classify it as somewhat of a disappointment. In spite of all of its shortcomings I still managed to finish "Great Pretenders". I just happened to be in the mood for some lighter reading and it fit the bill perfectly.
Though it was not a total waste of my time in the final analysis this is a book that clearly misses the mark. As such it is not a book that I can recommend.