Fred Waring's America

Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians New in Paperback

Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, an intimate portrait of an American legend known as “The man who taught America how to sing” is now available in paperback. The biography is accompanied by a compact disc with twenty-eight selections recorded by the Pennsylvanians over a forty-year period. Highlights include Adam Geibel and Tom Waring’s “Sleep,” recorded in 1928; Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale;” Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes;” the traditional “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” and “Dry Bones;” Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s “September Song;” and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Some Enchanted Evening.”

Written by Virginia Waring, his wife of thirty years, the book chronicles both his many achievements and his shortcomings with candor and affection. Her gracefully written biography traces Waring’s childhood in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, his rise to fame as a bandleader, the development and promotion of the Waring Blendor, leadership of Shawnee Press, concert tours, radio and television programs, and his legacy in music and popular culture.

The newly available paperback edition of the book, first published in 1997, is available from the University of Illinois Press and can be ordered by calling 800-621-2736 or by sending an e-mail. (Paper, ISBN: 978-0-252-07444-8 $29.95 464 pages)