Sinatra: retreat of the romantic

by Arnold Shaw

392 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1968

About the author

Arnold Shaw, born Arnold Sokolof, was an American musicologist, composer and author. He received his BA in English literature from the City College of New York in 1929 and his MA from Columbia University in 1931. He pursued further studies in American Literature at New York University.

During his career in the music publishing industry, he began writing about music for various newspapers and magazines, and eventually began writing books about music and musicians. He won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award two times, in 1968 and 1979, and was also posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame for his book 'Honkers And Shouters: The Golden Years Of Rhythm & Blues'. He was also a songwriter, but found relatively little success in that field.

In 1979, Mr. Shaw proposed the creation of a music literature course titled "History of Rock Music" which he would teach on a part-time basis for the UNLV Music Department. His proposal was accepted and he began teaching the course in the fall of 1980. While he taught there, he founded the Popular Music Research Center at the UNLV College of Arts and Letters, which was named in his honor following his death in late 1989.

Reviews

[John McNulty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but strictly the published and printed facts of Sinatra. Noble but ultimately a little hollow.