by Ian Zack ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An effective biography that demonstrates Odetta’s wide, deep legacy.
One of the leading voices of the mid-20th-century folk revival receives her biographical due.
In a narrative that is both effectively researched and engagingly readable, Zack (Say No to the Devil: The Life and Musical Genius of Rev. Gary Davis, 2015) is convincing in his argument that Odetta Holmes (1930-2008) has been underappreciated for too long, and he shows how and why her reign as the “Queen of Folk” was over before folk music hit its commercial peak. When folk music, progressive politics, and the civil rights movement were forging a unity of conviction in the 1950s, the young Odetta was clearly the right artist at the right time, with a moral fervor in her powerful lower register that could bring audiences to their knees. She wasn’t threatening in the manner of ex-convict Lead Belly, and she hadn’t suffered the blacklisting taint of Pete Seeger and other more overtly leftist singers. With her regal bearing and impressive vocal talents, Odetta proved inspirational to audiences and fellow artists alike. “When I first heard her…my knees went to jelly,” said Joan Baez, who then rose to fame as younger white performers began to find the commercial success that had eclipsed anything Odetta had achieved—and deserved. Their success made her bitter, and she felt that even her longtime manager, Albert Grossman, had betrayed her. Odetta charged that as the first client managed by the man who would become a legend with a stable including Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary, he “built his business on my back and I never benefited from it.” Stronger management might well have nurtured her potential as an actress and helped her to navigate the sea changes of the 1970s through the end of the century, when her performing draw diminished and her recording career stalled. She also battled alcohol addiction and was often branded as difficult offstage. Regardless of her struggles, Zack brings her back into the spotlight.
An effective biography that demonstrates Odetta’s wide, deep legacy.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3532-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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