The Song Is You: Random Thoughts on My Mother and the American Songbook

The Song Is You: Random Thoughts on My Mother and the American Songbook

by Angela Starita When my mother was a teenager in the early 1940s, a NY-area radio station ran a weekly contest, asking listeners to vote for their favorite singer among two: Crosby or Sinatra? How people made this preference known remains unclear to me: did you need a phone in your house to make a call to the station or was sending a postcard enough? Whatever the method, the winner would be announced each Sunday afternoon. While Sinatra often …