In this ambitious narrative of a moment in music history, Kaye, a musician and coauthor of Waylon
, highlights the age of crooning in early 1930s New York City. Prohibition is coming to an end, the Ziegfeld Follies are on their last leg, but radio is stronger than ever, and three singers battle for attention: Rudy Vallee (the WASPy Yalie who sings through a megaphone); the drink-loving Bing Crosby; and the mysterious Russ Columbo. It's on the latter that Kaye focuses until Columbo's untimely death at the age of 26. Kaye takes a novelistic approach, a style that gets in the way of an otherwise good and detailed history. His present-tense narrative forces a sense of immediacy, and his literary attempts to bring the sounds and feel of the decade to life undermine his story ("Yoo hoo. Boo hoo.
The double o of crooning. A circle squared. Times two, or should we say too"
). But Kaye has done his research, and his characterizations of each singer are clever, with such insightful observations as "At the New York Paramount, Bing Crosby is riding out over the audience on a giant mechanical crane.... Russ doesn't have that luxury.... For him, seduction is serious business." Agent, David Gernert.
(Aug.)
