What do you do with a 362-page anthology of music biographies?<\/p>\n
You look up your favorite musicians and study the sections on the music that has always moved you. You may skip the jazz chapter but concentrate on the classical section while devoting extra time to the pages on rock and roll. It\u2019s all relative. One person\u2019s champagne is another\u2019s poison.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The book, entitled The Philadelphia Music Book, published by Camino Books, was edited by Larry Magid, who opened Philadelphia\u2019s legendary Electric Factory in 1962, and who co-produced Live-Aid, the world\u2019s largest music event, in 1985. Magid, no doubt, selected the artists written about by the eleven or so writers listed as contributors. Some writers, like Larry Platt and Clark DeLeon, are well-known journalists who don\u2019t often write about music, while others are music critics or music producers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It occurred to me: what musicians didn\u2019t make the cut? But I\u2019ll get to that later.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The majority of the artists profiled might be said to be true Philadelphians, while many spent some time here but cannot be said to be full-time residents. Some of the entries might surprise you since they are known primarily for their acting, but because they engaged in a musical stint or two, they wound up in this book, such as actor Bradley Cooper. As with any anthology, the bios and profiles are somewhat abbreviated and in some cases \u201csanitized,\u201d but that doesn\u2019t mean that hard truths are avoided, such as reasons associated with a cause of death.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The scope of the book is immense: string bands, classical music, opera, gospel, jazz, blues, crooners, hip hop, rap and American DJ\u2019s to short histories of musical organizations like the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Vocal Arts Academy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The section on Dick Clark and American Bandstand got me thinking about my interview with Frank Brancaccio in 2014 (Legendary Locals of Center City Philadelphia) when he told me, \u201cDick Clark had three rules for dancers: no camera hogs, no close dancing, and no dancing with someone of a different color.\u201d To filter out the show\u2019s gays, Clarks sent spies to Rittenhouse Square to see if any of the male regulars were conjuring lavender spirits. Brancaccio also told me that most of the good-looking male American Bandstand regulars were not heterosexual.<\/p>\n
The Chubby Checker entry reminded me of the times I passed his house in Chester County while riding in the car with my family as a boy. \u201cThe Twist\u201d was an international dance craze in the 1960s that predated Twiggy and New York\u2019s Peppermint Lounge. Not only was my entire eighth grade class doing the Twist, but it was a dance that got your grandparents into the swing of things.<\/p>\n
Before Chubby there was South Philly\u2019s famous trio: Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon. Fabian and Rydell both had great pompadours, the hairstyle of note for males at the time. This was also the age of the transistor radio, a teen-boy \u201cmust have,\u201d along with 45 records of hit popular songs like Ed Burns\u2019s Cookie, Cookie Lend Me your Comb. (Burns had no connection to Philly, so he\u2019s not in the book.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the classical music world, I recall meeting Leopold Stokowski as a high school student, his shock of white tasseled hair reminiscent of Einstein\u2019s as he walked through a crowd of admirers and photographers. My paternal grandmother introduced me to classical music. She was a lover from way back; her brother was a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The section on Eugene Ormandy called to mind the time I worked as a busboy at the Barclay Hotel on Rittenhouse Square. Ormandy lived in the hotel at that time but I never saw him in the dining room.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In West Chester, Pennsylvania, composer Samuel Barber worked on his classical compositions, while in Center City in a club called the Mystique on Spruce Street, jazz pianist and sometime vocalist Beryl Booker, who accompanied Billie Holiday in Paris, played the piano for patrons when not hanging out with her nephew and me in Chinatown. For years after Booker\u2019s death I tried to get her a plaque on Broad Street\u2019s Music Hall of Fame, but the bureaucracy proved to be too complicated. I was very happy to see her included in the book.<\/p>\n
Who can forget the abrupt, tragic ending of singer Jim Croce who died a small plane crash at age 30 in 1973?\u00a0 He was buried in Haym Salomon Memorial Park in Frazer, where I grew up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Both Ann Crumb, who won a Tony-nomination in 1992 for her portrayal in the title role of the Broadway musical Anna Karenina, and her father, avant-garde composer George Crumb, lived in Media, Pennsylvania. I interviewed both father and daughter in 2010.<\/p>\n
Some of that interview:<\/p>\n
\u201cThese days Crumb divides her time between Media and New York City. Crumb chatted about subletting her beautiful New York apartment, and shared her memories of living in Boulder, Colorado. Having lived in Boulder myself, getting the Diva to open up about her life there was easy. She told me where to find wild horses in the foothills of Boulder\u2019s Rocky Mountains, as well as her impressions of the infamous JonBenet Ramsey house: \u2018It\u2019s a beautiful mini-mansion, really quite spectacular with big fences and gardens, but it keeps getting sold. It\u2019s like the people get in there and something chases them out.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
So many musicians, so little space to mention them all, from John Coltrane, Stan Getz (and his white jazz), Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Peggy King, John Legend, and Marian Anderson. There\u2019s also Jaco Pastorius (1951-1987), a composer who also played electric bass. Joni Mitchell said of him: \u201cIn a way, I feel like I dreamed Jaco. I mean, he was exactly what I was waiting for, sonically.\u201d Jaco died from head injuries inflicted by a bouncer at a night club.<\/p>\n
Listed DJ\u2019s include Pierre Robert, WMMR\u2019s chief DJ for over 40 years. In the 1980s he was a DJ in the Bay Area working under the nom de plume Will Robertson. Raised Catholic, he told Philly Magazine he was \u201cspiritual,\u201d but he liked Buddhas and had them all over his house in Gladwyne. Robert\u2019s cause of death is still officially unknown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Musicians who didn\u2019t make the cut include Kenn Kweder, noted by many as a Philadelphia musical legend and rock star. Since the late 1970s, I\u2019ve spotted Kweder concert notices on billboards and telephone poles. Such tenacity is to be admired, even if he didn\u2019t make it into the big music book.<\/p>\n
Another talent who didn\u2019t make it was Steinway artist Duncan Stearns, who studied under pianist Susan Starr and recorded for the Musical Heritage Society. Stearns, a friend of mine, died in May 2012.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thom Nickels is a Broad + Liberty\u2019s Editor at Large for Arts and Culture and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including \u201cLiterary Philadelphia\u201d and \u201dFrom Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.\u201d His latest is \u201cDeath in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.\u201d He is currently at work on \u201cThe Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,\u201d about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do you do with a 362-page anthology of music biographies? You look up your favorite musicians and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24109,7865,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-40651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-book-review","tag-music","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}