A charming and informative must-read for music lovers, with a personal touch for fans of ’60s folk and roots music.
Professional musician Greenhill recounts his musical history with his idols in this debut memoir.
Anyone who knows folk and blues music from the late 1950s onward will likely be jealous of Greenhill’s experiences. His father, Manny, was a concert promoter, and a who’s who of luminaries would stay at the family house when they came to town. The young author was already in love with music after his mother, Leona, took him to see Paul Robeson perform a children’s concert. Family friend Pete Seeger helped solidify that love and got him started playing guitar. From then on, he soaked up knowledge at every turn, learning from legends. For instance, Odetta taught him how to slide up the neck for a ringing E7 chord, and the Rev. Gary Davis instructed him on how to wrap his thumb around the neck for a thicker C7 chord (which he helpfully illustrates with a photo of the finger position for aspiring guitarists—one of many attractive photos that accompany the narrative). The family moved from Brooklyn to Boston, and Greenhill fell into the Cambridge folk scene frequented by Taj Mahal, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. He became a professional musician and toured the country, living in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles. Over the course of this book, Greenhill employs a wonderful, elliptical approach to storytelling, following experiences with particular performers over the course of a chapter and not following a strictly chronological course. The stories are very personal and engaging. For instance, Greenhill writes about how Lightnin’ Hopkins rudely spat out the eggs that Greenhill’s mother cooked for him (he found them too runny); the 16-year-old author saw this act as “transgressive” and “wild,” and it coincided with the teen’s taking his driver’s test, which he saw as another form of freedom. There are some technical explanations that guitarists will appreciate more than laypeople, but they never detract from the overall story.
A charming and informative must-read for music lovers, with a personal touch for fans of ’60s folk and roots music.Pub Date: April 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-64445-5
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Hillgreen
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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