![]() ![]() Far too many pages are devoted to a fatuous quiz – “Hey Diddle, Riddle” – with 100 questions and the answers supplied (“no need to Google”) with the questions reprinted at the end of the book. It includes an intriguing entry for the vocalist “Billy” (sic) Holiday. Littlefield gratuitously confides that “I don’t know about you, but I always see a movie or TV series as being a marriage between the story and the music.” And also that “1960 was the year Real Madrid thrashed Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 in The European Cup Final at Glasgow’s Hampden Park.” (Whether Riddle played or was even present is not revealed.)īibliographical references are sparse and incomplete, while the index idiosyncratically lists its human subjects by their given rather than family names. Pedestrian prose, ungrammatical sentences, superficial analyses, apparently scissors and paste assembly, over-quotation, excessive use of exclamation marks and the word “iconic”, detract from any meaningful estimates of its ostensible subject. ![]() A handsome cover photo shows Nelson with Frank Sinatra (whose flagging career he helped to rescue and reignite) poring over music manuscripts in a recording studio. The old adage that a book cannot be judged by its cover certainly applies to Geoffrey Littlefield’s “authorised biography” of famed arranger, composer and leader Nelson Riddle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |