This is a very pleasant collection of early American songs as well as popular songs from the World Wars. There is a brief "bio" of each song and the arrangements are fairly simple. It is a nice collection for singing and playing the piano. In my family, my Grandfather plays the music and my brother and I sing the words. We've entertained for many gatherings in our piano room that way to everyone's delight. It makes for a pleasant evening.
Great Overview of Condensed Songs:
I quit piano lessons in the eighth grade (the familiar story of the indimidating piano teacher) but I kept playing on my own all through high school and this is the book I played over and over. It has a fantastic overview of many American musical genres of the first half of the 20th century, occasionally dipping slightly back to the late 19th.
The arrangements are fairly easy to play for the intermediate piano player yet they sound deceptively impressive. Guitar chords are also present.
This is a great songbook for the indtermediate player. The arrangements are full of wonderful rich harmony chording that is not hard to follow. I love a great deminished 7th chord and this book has it. I own five of the Readers Digest song books and whish I had more. In particular I would suggest "The Treasury of Great Showtunes" from this same series.
Has a lot of standards, but arrangements are pretty simple:
I bought this because I wanted a book that had a lot of the standards. It does. I like to play and sing with my kids (toddlers) and with extended family on different occaisions. I like that it has different holiday songs, ("When Irish Eyes are Smilin'") some patriotic stuff ("America") and plain old songs ("By the light of the Silvery Moon." ) I do wish that the arrangements were a little more difficult...I am not really a great player (one year of lessons in Junior High) but I found myself putting in extra... more info
