Vocal Books

"The First Book of Broadway Solos, Part II" (blue cover)

Contains twenty-four songs for baritone/bass: Anyone would love you; Brother, my brother; Camelot; C'est moi; The crossing (Big River); The desert song; Dulcinea; A fellow needs a girl; Guys and dolls; I do, I do; If I were a rich man; London Bridge; Luck be a lady; Man of La Mancha; More I cannot wish you; My time of day; Never say no; Other pleasures (Aspects of Love); Put on a happy face; The sun has got his hat on (Me and My Girl); This can't be love; Waitin' for the light to shine (Big River); Wand'rin star; Were thine that special face.

The printed music is clear, clean and bright. A CD with piano accompaniments to all the songs is contained in an envelope inside the book. Pianist Laura Ward energizes the songs with an understanding of performance style. If you find her tempo is not right for you, you can CHANGE her tempo, making it slower or faster using the free software included on the CD. The software is called Amazing Slow Downer. This software also lets you TRANSPOSE the piano accompaniment up or down. The free software on the CD does not seem to allow you to save your adjusted version. One solution is to purchase the full software (costing about $40 from the company's website [..] which allows you to save your adjustments to the accompaniment track for burning to a CD, etc. For the budget-mined, tech-savvy singer, a free software like Audacity might allow you make alterations and save the file for burning.

Father M. Owen Lee is a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and a long time opera lover whose commentaries are sometimes heard during intermissions of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.
His book is an affectionate series of short articles about specific operas based on his intermission talks. Among the operas treated are Faust, Les Troyens , die Meistersinger, die Frau Ohne Schatten, Contes d Hoffmann and various works by Verdi and Puccini.
I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Die Meistersinger, and Les Troyens.
The erudition is impressive, and I learned a number of interesting things, such as the origin of the do,re,mi.. names for notes in a scale.
Professor Lee lectures on Virgil at University, and his knowledge is particularly on display in regard to Les Troyens. In discussing Meistersinger, he brings out a number of things about St. John the Baptist which were new to me.
The discussion of Offenbach's last opera Tales of Hoffmann stresses the
incomplete nature of what the composer wrote, and the ongoing scholarship
needed to discover missing pieces of the score. Interesting also is the
way the composer used music from his previous operas- the famous Barcarolle was originally written for another opera.
In spite of the erudition, the book is not an intimidating read, and the author displays a sincere love of his subject. All opera fans owe it to themselves to partake of Father Lee's writings.

For anyone who still remembers Flanders and Swan, and still can't stop singing their songs, this book is the best. End those family arguments over lyrics once and for all (is Scarlet Painted before Diesel Engine, or after?). Without this book I doubt my 5-year-old would be able to sing every word of the Transport of Delight, or the Reluctant Cannibal. Of course he can, and it is thanks to this marvelous book. We miss you Michael and Donald.

This songbook has 27 songs in it. I only know the more popular ones, like: As Long As You Follow, Don't Stop, Gypsy, Hold Me, Landslide, Little Lies, Over My Head, Rhiannon & Sara. I play standard notation and I found this to be a simple guitar book and the notes go along with the words, except a tiny intro. I wish it would have been more like how the songs are actually played, but I have to give it 5 stars anyway because most music books out there are formatted like this one. For you TAB folks, sorry--there are none. The intro for "Dreams" is also short, but sounds very beautiful!

Although it's not their best known musical, Flower Drum Song is Rodgers and Hammerstein at their greatest! I really enjoyed the fact that it included songs from both the 1958 and 2002 Broadway versions. The arrangements of the songs make the songs playable and wonderful for a "normal" musician.

Complete music on 2 cds, complete libretto, history of composer, history on this opera, historical performance notes...What else could you ask for for under $...! AND you end up getting so much more out of the performance when you know the story to the music. You spend less time reading the sub-title screen and more time enjoying the performance. (Not to mention you can be a "smarty pants" and share the operas history with other patrons.)

I wish they had more than 14 operas in this collection. Also great for the opera collection is "The Book of 101 Opera Librettos" also by Black Dog.

(About the story...Love forsaken, love found, love lost, love ultimately saves the day. Ahhhhhh....Can't wait to see this one.)

Black Dog? Are you reading this? I want more!

Joining others in Greenwood's excellent college-level history series Guides to American Roots Music', FOLK MUSIC: A REGIONAL EXPLORATION covers all aspects of American folk traditions, from differing styles ranging from blues ballads to hollers and erotic songs, to instruments, regional differences in folk music, and the evolution of songs. A thorough exploration of major and minor genres and sub-genres keeps FOLK MUSIC an in-depth study worthy of college-level classroom attention for any American music history course.

AS Mr. Loesberg repeatedly indicates in his fine and clarifying introduction, these are not Irish songs, as alleged here in the editorial comments on amazon's product detail page, but rather are they songs popular in Ireland over a quarter century ago, when this pamphlet found collection and publication in the great coastal city of Cork.

Therefore we find included only two songs in the Irish tongue (a fact lamented and explained in the introduction), but some English, Scots and American tunes. Thank goodness the allegedly Irish song Danny Boy does not arise its dubious head. However we do find Leadbelly's House of the Rising Sun with the additional verses as recorded by the young Bob Dylan (copying Dave Van Rank) and Eric Burdon with the early Animals. We also find the English slaver's hymn Amazing Grace, as well Scarborough Fair.

Nevertheless with great and tearful joy I find several songs familiar from the early Clancy Brothers (inclduing Jug of Punch) and those reinvigorated by the mighty mighty Pogues. Thus you may once more rousingly shout The Leaving of Liverpool and the great Wild Rover (or just play their CD if you are alone as I).

Gratefully included here are some wonderful Irish nationalist and revolutionary tunes as well, including A Nation Once Again, The Foggy Dew, The Bold FEnian Men, The Rising of the Moon, and the great and mournful ode to Kevin Barry, whose life and death reads now like an insurgent in Gitmo or Abhu Graibh. Brief notes concerning each song are gathered at the end of thise broadside, and Mr. Loesberg mentions "Kevin was killed on Nov. 1, 1920. he tune is from a sea shanty- 'Rolling Home.'" The lyrics themselves give more of the history, as such songs were once part of the oral history of our great nation:

"In Mountjoy Jail one Monday morning High up on the gallows tree, Kevin Barry gave his young life, for the cause of liberty. But a lad of eighteen summers, yet no one can deny, As he walked to death that morning, he proudly held his head on high.

"Just before he faced the hangmen, in his dreary prison cell, British soldiers tortured Barry, just because he would not tell The names of his brave companions and other things they wished to know. 'Turn informer or we'll kill you!' Kevin Barry answered 'No.'

"( . . .skipping a verse)"

"Another martyr for old Ireland, another murder for the crown, whose brutal laws may kill the IRish, but can't keep their spirits down. ( . . .)"

We who cannot remember our history are condemned to repeating it now.

The bulk of this glorious book of course is filled with sentimental tunes of loves both near and far, including of course Will you go Lassie Go, and several others beside, well known and lesser remembered but exciting to find the beauty of this music.

Mr. Loesberg acknowledges the kind assistance of the Cork Library and schools and families in collecting the songs in this book, and includes guitar chords for each song, and some very useful pages of guitar and music theory at the end, inclduing regarding the transposition of keys and chords, and the use of a capo. The chord charts on page 60 alone are worth the slight price of the book, whose songs themselves are priceless.

Useful recordings of some of these songs include The Rising of the Moon: Irish Songs of Rebellion and Irish Songs of Rebellion/Irish Drinking Songs from the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, as well of course as the rousing pipes of Spider and the Pogues delivering in full Red Roses for Me and Rum Sodomy & the Lash, etc.

This book has it all - even a foreword by Stephen Sondheim. Songs like 'Can That Boy Foxtrot!,' 'Uptown, Downtown,' and 'The Road You Didn't Take,' all in standard piano/vocal/guitar notation.

I became a fan of Daniel O'Donnell when he came to Derry in N. Ireland, to promote the Samaritans as its Patron. He struck me as such an appealing personality, with that quality of the ordinary, yet special that contributes to the making of a real star.

I bought his book! And I found the style and content so appealing for several different reasons.

Being of an Irish background myself, I thought his description of childhood in Ireland was a most appealing and very true representation. So often we are only faced with the worst senarios and it is a wonderful relief to know that someone sees his childhood as a time of joy, happiness and caring as my own was. In this way, I loved being able to identify with the lifestyle that Daniel described.

His rise to fame, and his struggle to achieve his goals was again presented as an enjoyable experience not a great struggle against adversity and oppression. He gives credit to all who helped and guided him along the way, from the people he worked with to the fans he sang to. It is so nice to read such pleasanteries.

The whole tone of the book is one of a happy life certainly with struggles but without misery - the type of life many can identify with which ends in a success story wich we all love to hear and hope for.

There are many humerous anecdotes which really lighten up the whole story, simple but true and all the funnier for being so.

I thought this a wonderful tonic of a book!