Red Stars: Personality and the Soviet Popular Song, 1955-1991 Book

What happens in Oslo, stays in Oslo.

That is why I purchased this memoir by Andy Williams. While I had heard his music and knew him as a famous singer, it was an appearance he made on the radio show, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me that had me looking at him in a different way. The boyish tenor had a sense of humor? Okay, let me read about that.

Williams does not spend the book dissing his peers or going on too much about himself. The reader discovers that Andy never had great confidence and he mostly dreaded going onstage to perform. As he grew older and more famous, he eventually learned to love his profession and his one chapter on the dark side of his life, when he had to sing in tiny clubs to people who didn't care, showed he made his own luck. Williams had a father who drove Andy and his brothers to perform as a group (they were the Williams Brothers before Andy broke out) and the book compares the stressful situations to the fathers of the Osmond Brothers and the Jackson 5. Interesting. Thanks to YouTube, I found a clip featuring the brothers Williams and Osmonds performing a Christmas show.

I didn't know that Williams had an ex-wife who was accused of killing her famous skiing boyfriend. Williams believed she was innocent and stuck by her, although I always have suspicions whenever a person is "accidentally" killed in their bathroom as they are just about to step into the shower. I didn't know that Andy Williams was the very first host of the Grammy Awards or that he changed the Branson, Missouri scene when he opened his top-of-the-line showplace there. I didn't know that it was Williams who paid to have the "W" letter replaced in the iconic Hollywood sign when Hollywood was staggering. So I did learn a few things.

But I prefer the Andy Williams of the 1960s, wearing those cool Sixties sweaters and singing in that angelic tenor. Later plastic surgery made him look rather strange to me, but his music lives on. Music which, thanks to this book, I am now downloading and appreciating.

If I'm remembered at all, I hope to be thought of as a good man who brought much joy to many people, but above all I want to be remembered for my music.

Book Season = Summer (convene to make the scene)