The spellbinding story of one of history’s zaniest entertainers as told from the perspective of his daughter.
The daughter of a 20th-century jazz musician recollects her unique childhood in this debut memoir.
A classically trained Julliard musician, Harry Raab first made a splash on Harlem’s jazz scene in the 1930s. The Jewish, jive-taking boogie-woogie musician eventually evolved into “Harry the Hipster,” an alternative persona characterized by screwball, drug-themed antics. In the words of Cohen, his daughter, “He wanted his fame,” even if that meant shedding his own personality to become a caricature in the interest of securing television and radio appearances. In this memoir, set primarily during the 1950s and 1960s during Cohen’s childhood and adolescence, the author provides an intimate lens through which readers can view the life of an iconically idiosyncratic 20th-century musician. Readers are given a backstage tour of the era’s jazz scene featuring reflections on Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, and Fats Waller, among others. Cohen also takes readers into the backrooms of radio studios and low-budget television stations of the era; the book begins as Harry takes his family with him to The Al Jarvis Show, where they meet Betty White. While Cohen’s life as a showbiz kid was never dull, her dad consistently battled with personal demons and insecurities, spurring his never-ending quest to strike it rich with a platinum hit. This led him to write a slew of novelty Christmas songs in hopes one of them would take off, including “I Hope My Mother-in-law Don’t Come for Christmas.” Harry was also preoccupied with drugs, which inspired some of his more well-known songs, like “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine?” On one occasion, after Harry was arrested for drug possession, Cohen recalls her mother selling the family’s furniture to pay for legal fees (despite her father’s status as a B-list celebrity, the family lived modestly in a small home adjacent to a landfill and oil wells).
More than just a tell-all book about a wacky entertainer, this coming-of-age memoir features Cohen’s own story as a girl growing up in California during an era of national upheaval and social change—historical anecdotes from the era are blended with more intimate memories of childhood friends, siblings, teenage hormones, and even a hitchhiking adventure. Based on journal entries the author began writing in the early 1960s, the book’s vignettes are remarkably detailed, especially given the half-century between them and this remembrance. Described by Cohen as a “dramatized memoir,” the book is written almost like a novel, featuring reconstructed dialogue and occasional third-person narration (notably, the author rarely refers to her father as “dad,” but almost always as “Harry”). Cohen’s accessible prose style is punctuated by Harry’s jive-infused vocabulary, and the book includes a glossary of the era’s hipster lingo for neophytes. The pages also include an abundance of photographs and family snapshots. Cohen’s successes as a New York City–based artist and package designer for JC Penney are minimized in the text; invested readers may hope for a second book that details the author’s own history as a trailblazer in corporate America.
The spellbinding story of one of history’s zaniest entertainers as told from the perspective of his daughter.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9798990845626
Page Count: 598
Publisher: Plumtree Tales
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.
The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.
According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy, which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.
A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9780063226562
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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