And They All Sang: The Great Musicians Of The 20th Century Talk About Their Music

(Paperback)

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Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize-winning oral historian Studs Terkel hosted a legendary daily radio programme in Chicago - presenting listeners with his singular take on an eclectic range of music from classical, opera, and jazz to gospel, blues, folk and rock. And They All Sang features more than forty of Terkels' inimitable conversations from the programme with some of the greatest musicians of the past century. Among the many highlights: a 22 year-old Bob Dylan tells how he came to write A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall; Janis Joplin, in a rare interview, recalls her teenage years in Texas spent listening to old Leadbelly and Bessie Smith records; Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie talk about their sense of kinship with fellow jazz geniuses Joe Oliver and Charlie Parker. Perhaps the biggest revelation, though, is Terkel himself - whose brilliant insights reflect his profound understanding, and appreciation, of the affinities between all forms of music. Terkel offers us a remarkable collective portrait of the full spectrum of musical genres.

Reviews

*'This is vintage Terkel- interviewing forty of the greatest and most deeply human musical figures of our time' Oliver Sacks *'Terkel is the master of that rarest of skills: listening... he asks the right people the right questions' Observer *'Terkel could probably tease interesting life stories from a lamppost' Time Out

Author Bio

Studs Terkel is the author of many books of oral history, including Working and Will The Circle Be Unbroken He won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good War, and the Lifetime Achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle 2004. He is 95 years old in May 2007.