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You Call It Madness: The Sensuous Song of the Croon
Crosby, Vallee, Columbo. They are their own trinity. Bing is the universal dad. Rudy the misbehaving son. That leaves Russ. The holy ghost.
New York, 1931: The curtain falls on the Ziegfeld Follies, a victim of the rising popularity of talking pictures; Rudy Vallee, radio’s wildly popular “Vagabond Lover,” worries that increasingly sophisticated microphones and Hollywood-minted heartthrobs will make his megaphone-amplified vocals passé; a pugnacious, hard-drinking baritone named Bing Crosby cleans up his act, preparing to take America by storm on CBS radio; and handsome twenty-three-year-old Russ Columbo, a former violinist dating a Ziegfeld girl, makes his debut on NBC radio.
In an America poised to take its dominant place on the world stage, the Crooner points the way forward. With his heated core of sex appeal wrapped in well-tailored layers of cool distance and cigarette smoke, the Crooner brings something new to the country’s this is no Yankee-Doodle Dandy, but a suave and seductive figure, sophisticated as any European, flush with youthful strength and energy. It’s all there in his voice, his a soft, intimate, sensual form of singing that combines jazz sensibilities with the smooth and danceable rhythms of the Big Band sound and Swing.
But who would embody the new archetype? Vallee crooned too soon. That left Crosby and Columbo to duel it out over the airwaves. Hailed as “The Romeo of Radio” and “The Valentino of Song,” romantically linked to actresses Pola Negri and Carole Lombard, Columbo is all but forgotten today, his limitless promise cut short in a tragic and controversial accident as he stood on the verge of winning the stardom that Crosby, his great rival, would soon achieve.
In this impressionistic tour-de-force–a musical history combining the drama of a bestselling novel and a soundtrack from the Golden Age of Broadway and Hollywood–master musician and critic Lenny Kaye trains a spotlight on Columbo while crooning a love song to an earlier America–a pitch-perfect evocation of one of the most romantic, creatively exuberant periods of our past–an era whose influence still burns brightly in the music and popular culture of today.
From the Hardcover edition.
New York, 1931: The curtain falls on the Ziegfeld Follies, a victim of the rising popularity of talking pictures; Rudy Vallee, radio’s wildly popular “Vagabond Lover,” worries that increasingly sophisticated microphones and Hollywood-minted heartthrobs will make his megaphone-amplified vocals passé; a pugnacious, hard-drinking baritone named Bing Crosby cleans up his act, preparing to take America by storm on CBS radio; and handsome twenty-three-year-old Russ Columbo, a former violinist dating a Ziegfeld girl, makes his debut on NBC radio.
In an America poised to take its dominant place on the world stage, the Crooner points the way forward. With his heated core of sex appeal wrapped in well-tailored layers of cool distance and cigarette smoke, the Crooner brings something new to the country’s this is no Yankee-Doodle Dandy, but a suave and seductive figure, sophisticated as any European, flush with youthful strength and energy. It’s all there in his voice, his a soft, intimate, sensual form of singing that combines jazz sensibilities with the smooth and danceable rhythms of the Big Band sound and Swing.
But who would embody the new archetype? Vallee crooned too soon. That left Crosby and Columbo to duel it out over the airwaves. Hailed as “The Romeo of Radio” and “The Valentino of Song,” romantically linked to actresses Pola Negri and Carole Lombard, Columbo is all but forgotten today, his limitless promise cut short in a tragic and controversial accident as he stood on the verge of winning the stardom that Crosby, his great rival, would soon achieve.
In this impressionistic tour-de-force–a musical history combining the drama of a bestselling novel and a soundtrack from the Golden Age of Broadway and Hollywood–master musician and critic Lenny Kaye trains a spotlight on Columbo while crooning a love song to an earlier America–a pitch-perfect evocation of one of the most romantic, creatively exuberant periods of our past–an era whose influence still burns brightly in the music and popular culture of today.
From the Hardcover edition.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 16, 2008
Lenny has a way with words like no other. He interviewed my grandmother for this book and she enlightened him on Vince Colenda, a singer that he never heard of. So happy about this discovery, he added a little vignette on my grandmother and took poetic license with her sitting at Juniors before a show at the Paramount. Read the rest on your own it's great.
July 25, 2022
This didn't work for me at all. A lot of great information and storytelling about a period in music I have generally written off in my life. That period in time is not the issue. It was more Kaye's perspective which didn't seem to land on whether it was a personal memoir or Tosches-esque POV bio. Instead, the cuts between then and now just felt jarring - language was inconsistent. Ending each chapter or segment with some sort of poetic jive was sort of silly.
Just like if I did this. Over and over.
like Jazz.
Yeah.
Just like if I did this. Over and over.
like Jazz.
Yeah.
July 13, 2017
I found this simultaneously fascinating and frustrating as the author tended to get carried away with his attempts at musical prose. Lots of short staccato sentences and fanciful vignettes that didn't really add to the story. But then he'd bust out something that really worked and I'd be sucked in. Interesting look at a nearly forgotten something singer.
January 8, 2008
Fantastic read by one of the greats, Lenny Kaye. A portrait of the first 'rock star', Russ Columbo. Mesmerizing!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews