This is Brian Marcus Decker and this is the Jolson Blog, this is the first blog dedicated to the life and musical influences of Al Jolson, "The World's Greatest Entertainer" and Friends.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute!

In February 1917, a publicity man named Ben Atwell created a newspaper ad for Robinson Caruso Jr. promoting Al Jolson as “The World’s Greatest Entertainer”. From that moment on the stage was set and as my friend Joe Franklin once said, “Jolson the man who on one knee brought the entire world to his feet.” The rest is history.

On Friday, May 26, 2006 will be the 120^th birthday of Asa Yoelson born in Srednik, Lithuania.  Jolson would grow up to be more than just a legend.  He was also an important cultural pioneer of mass media. Beyond just a successful career in vaudeville, he was responsible for helping to legitimize the Broadway Theater. Jolson was an early contributor to radio that included 289 broadcasts as well as 76 guest appearances. He was the first entertainer to appear and sing in a full length, “talkie” feature film.  Jolson was also the first performer to sell a million records of a single song and had created an extensive library of over 231 studio recordings.

We begin this blog with a special six-part interview with Richard Grudens who has just published an entertaining and informative book entitled, “When Jolson Was King”.

Interview Part I: “When Jolson Was King”

Brian Marcus Decker: Over the years there have been several interesting biographies on Jolson by authors such as Herbert Goldman, Robert Oberfest, Michael Freedland and even Harry Jolson (Jolson’s brother). What made you choose Al Jolson as your latest project?

Richard Grudens: Well, I have been writing about singers and entertainers for many years and always liked Al Jolson and I did not think in terms of  planning to do it, but it just evolved after reading Bing Crosby’s book including Jolson in that book.  I decided that maybe I could do it.  So, I collected all the Jolson books I could find and I found a lot of them unmeritorious with a lot of fiction in it, a lot of filler, not just to the facts just because Jolson’s life was really tough but simple and I thought that all the other books ignored a lot of the things that happened around Jolson.  They did not talk about the people who played opposite him, they did not talk about his competition or the theaters he worked in, the did not talk about the song writers, just the songs, they didn’t mention the songs by George Gershwin, they didn’t say for instance how the songs came about in terms of him using them.  And, the black face issue was another problem and it bothered me to think that people thought of him as negative.  Like I think Bing Crosby’s negative because the book his son wrote about him, which, of course, was completely false.  So I decided that in my style of writing I could do a Jolson book that would be liked by everyone, it would not be an expert book, it would not be a detailed book but it would be a book that the average person not knowing anything about Al Jolson could read and enjoy. 

Brian Marcus Decker: There are also several extremely interesting things that I noticed about the book including the layout that incorporates a significant number of great graphical elements that are really interspersed through out your book.  .  I thought another interesting element was sort of his global perspective that covers not only Jolson but as you were talking the many people that have been either directly associated with or indirectly influenced by Jolson.  This It is an interesting technique that actually reminded me of an interesting autobiography by Eddie Cantor called, “As I Remember Them” published in 1963. Can you share a little bit more about sort of the creative process that was used in putting the book together?

Richard Grudens: Well, when you read a book you see nothing but narrative and nothing but words for hundreds of pages and then six pictures of the subject and not always good pictures.  To me it is boring to read a book that is like reading a telephone directory.  And, I think that people like to read the words but they also like to see the pictures as you go along so that they get a working idea of what you are talking about so if you are talking about him (Jolson) singing Swanee for instance there would be pictures of George Gershwin at the piano and maybe Irving Caesar making a comment and we highlight the comments by shading them and by making the book interesting but yet not corny so that we cove all aspects and the story is told in the picture and in the graphics and in words and sometimes we add the words of the song although we can’t always put the music in so that everything comes together and you get a better picture of what you are reading.

Come back next week for Part II of our continuing interview with Richard Grudens, the author of: “When Jolson Was King” where we will discuss:

• Which songwriters do you feel had the greatest impact on Jolson’s career?

• Jolson had a strong influence on everyone including Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Dean Martin and interestingly enough even Elvis Presley. Do you consider this the short list and if so who would you add to the list?

For more information about, “When Jolson was King”, please visit www.RichardGrudens.com.

 Mean while I'm heading to Philadelphia this Friday for the International Al Jolson Society 2006 Jolson Festival and hope to see all of you there.

Also I encourage all of you to also visit other relevant websites and become members of the International Al Jolson Society http://www.jolson.org/ and the Eddie Cantor Appreciation Society http://www.eddiecantor.com/.