Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians
By: Virginia Waring ; foreword by Robert Shaw.
Series: Music in American life
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Urbana
Language: eng
Number of pages: 404
Subjects: Waring, Fred, 1900-; Pennsylvanians (Musical group); Choral conductors -- United States -- Biography.
Description: Famous American, chorus leader, showman, glee club pioneer, golf tournament host, entrepreneur - the man who taught America how to sing! Fred Waring was all of these and more, an enigma who held together a major musical organization for sixty-seven years, a man at ease on stage but loathe to sit through meetings, a man so earnest in his patriotism that by the 1980s he was considered almost an endangered species.

Virginia Waring, his wife of thirty years, chronicles both his many achievements and his shortcomings with candor and affection in Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Her gracefully written biography traces Waring's childhood in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, his rise to fame as a bandleader, development and promotion of the Waring Blendor, leadership of Shawnee Press, concert tours, radio and television programs, and his legacy of the highest possible standards in music as in life.

This intimate portrait of an American legend is accompanied by a compact disc with twenty-eight selections recorded by the Pennsylvanians over a forty-year period.
Notes: Includes compact disc (1 sound disc : digital ; 4 3/4 in.) with 28 excerpts from radio shows and commercial recordings dating from 1923-1963.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-382) and index.
Table of contents: title: Prologue : the man who taught America how to sing; title: The Victorian Warings; title: Entrepreneur; title: Penn State; title: The brash kid from Tyrone; title: Milk trains; title: Stairway to fame; title: Paris; title: Fred loses his shirt; title: Ballet, classics and the Roxyettes; title: Radio days; title: Henry Ford & Co.; title: The legalities of interpretation; title: The Waring blendor; title: Burgeoning empire; title: Hollywood; title: "A cigarette, sweet music, and you"; title: My debut; title: For the sake of one singer; title: Music workshops; title: Television; title: The Anti-Semitic rumor; title: Life with Fred; title: Golf; title: "On the road again"; title: Ike and the famous; title: Crucible of professionals; title: Stroke; title: Timing; title: Phaetons, Zephyrs and Model A Fords; title: What glorious music; title: Photo album.