Synopsis
Until shortly after World War II, the sale of sheet music was the primary measure of a song's success; most composers earned more from printed music sheets than from records. The most popular songs sold literally millions of copies, and colorful covers attracted customers almost as powerfully as the songs themselves inside. Artists like Sydney Leff, who created those covers, made that happen. They were the truly unsung artists of Tin Pan Alley.
"A monograph about Sydney Leff is long overdue. Part of the explanation for this work being neglected is that sheet music cover art was long viewed as one of the lowest forms of commercial art. Even some commercial artists deemed it to be beneath them. It was not viewed as something of value.
"Now, after Pop Art and other art movements challenged the high/low distinction in art, we are able to look at this artwork without the blinders of that old paradigm. And what do we see? Among other things, a contemporaneous visual expression of the Great American Songbook. We see a visual world that is a riotous collision and cross-pollination of styles, like jazz. We see the heady transitional period between the World Wars, between the "weird old America" and the post-WWII global superpower.
"We also see something by, from, and about New York City, which was the center of the world for popular music production and publication in the 1920s and 1930s. We see and feel the push and pull between the gloomy realities of the Depression years and people's yearning for escape, fantasy, beauty, joy, and transcendence."
-Norman Gholson von Holtzendorff, from his introduction
À propos des auteurs
WYATT DOYLE is co-founder and ringmaster of New Texture. He launched its imprint in 2006, and edits and designs most releases. A collection of his stories illustrated by Stanley J. Zappa, STOP REQUESTED, is available from New Texture, as are his photography collections, DOLLAR HALLOWEEN, I NEED REAL TUXEDO AND A TOP HAT!, BUTY-WAVE IS NOW CLOSED FOREVER, and JORGE AMAYA DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. A collaboration with Jimmy Angelina, THE LAST COLORING BOOK, was released in 2016, followed by THE LAST COLORING BOOK ON THE LEFT in 2017. With Robert Deis, he established The Men's Adventure Library series of pulp fiction anthologies, which include contributions from Bruce Jay Friedman, Walter Kaylin, Robert Silverberg, Robert F. Dorr, Harlan Ellison, artists Samson Pollen, Mort Künstler, and Gil Cohen, and men's adventure supermodel Eva Lynd.He assisted Georgina Spelvin in the publication of her memoir, THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, and served as editor and publisher of BLACK CRACKER by Josh Alan Friedman for his own imprint, Wyatt Doyle Books. He curates the New Texture website and Rev. Raymond Branch's RevBranch.com. His original screenplay with Jason Cuadrado, I'M HERE FOR YOU, was filmed as DEVIL MAY CALL in 2013. He performs in the Stanley J. Zappa Quartet. A recording, THE STANLEY J. ZAPPA QUARTET PLAYS FOR THE SOCIETY OF WOMEN ENGINEERS, is available now.
Born and raised in Manhattan, HAL GLATZER performs the music of his native islanders-The Great American Songbook, from Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. He began collecting sheet music more than forty years ago, and is profoundly grateful for this opportunity to talk about them.Hal got his first paying gig at age 12, in the Boys' Chorus of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Though he initially studied violin and clarinet, he took up guitar and banjo as a teenager, joined the folk music revival of the Sixties, and performed in bluegrass bands. But in 1980, he returned to his Manhattan roots and has been playing and singing the popular songs of the 1920s, '30s and '40s ever since. He is a published mystery author, best known for the Katy Green series, set in musical milieux during the years just before World War II. For the audio play version of Too Dead to Swing, about murder in an all-female Swing band, he also composed the songs. More about Hal's music and mysteries is at www.halglatzer.comNORMAN GHOLSON VON HOLTZENDORFF attributes his interest in Jazz Age music to his mother's side of the family, and dedicates his work on this project "To my late mother, Shirley Gholson (1935-2021), who got me piano lessons as a kid and passed along to me her love of music." His maternal great-aunt Ethel played piano for silent films in Atlanta movie theaters, and he inherited some of her sheet music from his maternal grandfather. Norman also heard his grandfather's stories about seeing Sophie Tucker and Eva Tanguay in vaudeville shows in New York in the 1910s and 1920s. On the west coast, Norman's great-uncle Louis von Holtzendorff worked in security for Paramount Pictures, where he rose to the position of chief, and later became a private detective in Hollywood. Secrets of the stars he knew (Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, etc.) were well kept-Norman's mother could never get any Hollywood gossip out of Uncle Louis. Norman's sheet music collecting stands on the shoulders of collector friends who have been doing it longer and have much better collections, such as Alex Hassan, Peter Mintun, Harold Jacobs, Roy Bishop, Vince Giordano, and Michael Feinstein. To these luminaries go much of the credit and none of the blame for Norman's collection. Norman lives in a house from 1907 in the historic Garvanza neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles with his husband Francesco, their rescue dog Rocco, and a restored 1926 Steinway M baby grand piano.
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