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 American
Popular Song : The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 by
Alec Wilder, James T. Maher (Editor), Graham Lees
When
Alec Wilder's American Popular Song first appeared, it was
almost universally hailed--from The New York Times to The
New Yorker to Down Beat--as the definitive account of the
classic era of American popular music. It has since become
the standard work of the great songwriters who dominated
popular music in the United States for half a century. Now
Wilder's classic is available again, with a new introduction
by Gene Lees.
Uniquely
analytical yet engagingly informal, American Popular Song
focuses on the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic qualities
that distinguish American popular music and have made it
an authentic art form. Wilder traces the roots of the American
style to the ragtime music of the 1890s, shows how it was
incorporated into mainstream popular music after 1900, and
then surveys the careers of every major songwriter from
World War I to 1950. Wilder devotes desparate chapters to
such greats as Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin,
Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen. Illustrated
with over seven hundred musical examples, Wilder's sensitive
analyses of the most distinctive, creative, and original
songs of this period reveal unexpected beauties in songs
long forgotten and delightful subtleties in many familiar
standards. The result is a definitive treatment of a strangely
unsung and uniquely American art. (Amazon.com)
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