Not a lot of people know that (From Watford Observer)

Not a lot of people know that

1:42pm Tuesday 9th February 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

The 20th Century’s great songwriters, the global distribution of Belgians and the occupations of those killed in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre are among the subjects covered in two books by a Totteridge writer, Brian Ariel.

In Jazz Songs, he provides a wealth of information about many songs, especially those from The Great American Songbook, as well as biographies of songwriters, from the lesser-known to the likes of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter.

“I find the biogs are more interesting than the songs – the characters that are the songwriters,“ says Brian.

Brian names a few examples, including Eden Ahbez (real name George Alexander Aberle). He wrote Nature Boy, and when Nat King Cole needed to track down the writer before releasing the song, Ahbez was discovered living wild, sleeping rough below the Hollywood sign. Brian describes Ahbez as a proto hippie, and adds: “He stressed that his name should be only in lower case. He said that only God could use capital letters in his name.”

Also, Lewis Allan (born Abel Meeropol), who wrote Strange Fruit, raised the two orphaned sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the first civilians executed for espionage in United States history. He took on the pseudonym of Lewis Allan, after two of his own children died young.

Writing Jazz Songs was a labour of love for Brian, who spent two decades working on it.

Brian’s other book, Everything You Never Wanted to Know and Never Bothered to Ask, contains personal trivia covering subjects including geography, literature, sport, name changes, burial sites and music.

From that book he tells me that Detroit, Michigan has the largest Belgian community outside of Belgium, while the word Texas was the word for “friends” among the native American people of the area.

Brian, 70, works as an optometrist, and he also has some trivia on that subject. He tells me: “One of the people shot in the St Valentine’s Day massacre was an optometrist.”

To order copies of Jazz Songs (£20) or Everything You Never Wanted to Know and Never Bothered to Ask (£10), email sports.vision@btinternet.com