Shout, Sister, Shout!: Ten Girl Singers Who Shaped a Century

Roxane Orgill selected ten of the greatest female volcatist of the last century to highlight in these fascinating biographies in "Shout, Sister, Shout". As you take a musical journey through this book you will meet ten amazing women, including Bette Midler, Joan Baez, Judy Garland, Madonna, and Lucinda Williams. You will get a glimpse into how music changed their lives and how their music changed the world. Roxane Orgill includes descriptions of some of the clothes these women wore and discussions of how we experience music has changed through the decades. This a fabulous book with great pictures and interesting stories. I would recommend to anyone who enjoys music.

Author Roxane Orgill picked a single woman to epitomize each decade of the 20th century, profiling women of different genres, each of whom has an interesting story and voice. Shout, Sister, Shout! is a great introduction to the performers and leaves one wanting to read more about each one of them, while artfully giving a sense of the developments of the 20th century. I read this fascinating, photographically illustrated book in two sittings and was sorry when it was over. For the 1950s we get, not all-American girl Doris Day, but jazz singer and junkie Anita O'Day, and Orgill chooses outrageous Bette Midler for the 70s instead of Linda Rondstadt, for instance. Her choice for the 1990s was the most difficult ["How was I to know which of the top performers (of the 1990s) would still be considered exceptional ten, twenty, thirty years from now?"]; with keen insight, the author finally picked alt-country singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, though she includes long sidebars about Wynonna Judd and LeAnn Rimes as well. Additional sidebars describe advances in music technology and each performer's fashions, and Orgill sneaks in advancements in women's and civil rights, without whitewashing each woman's difficulties, triumphs, love affairs, and addictions. Two of `em - Anita O'Day and Ethel Merman - never learned to cook, and O'Day didn't clean, either. (You go, girls!) Incidentally, O'Day chose her stage last name because, she said, "In pig Latin it meant `dough,' which was what I hoped to make." Make sure the music-loving young women in your life see this book, and if you're a grrrl of ANY age or gender, you're sure to enjoy it yourself.

I just finished reading SIGHTS by Susanna Vance before I read this. Together, these are my favorite books. Both authors show girls at their strong best. I'm inspired!