By: Brian Berger

A husky contralto and vivid lyricism

By: Brian Berger

Sacred exhortations and electric blues.

By: Brian Berger

Fresh and invigorating jazz

By: Brian Berger

His imagination was prodigious.

By: Brian Berger

Riotous, often subversive satire.

By: Brian Berger

Revelatory ways of relating chords to scales.

By: Brian Berger

He cofounded The Living Theater repertory company.

By: Brian Berger

A complete entertainer, ill-served by Hollywood

By: Brian Berger

His early Hollywood music was darker than we recall.

By: Brian Berger

Typist by day, jazzbo by night.

By: Brian Berger

One of the most soulful tenor men of his generation.

By: Brian Berger

His first film was 1932’s PIE, PIE, BLACKBIRD.

By: Brian Berger

He wrote a bestselling work of socialist utopianism.

By: Brian Berger

“Coarse, brutal, sordid, bestial, but painted with marvelous vividness”

By: Brian Berger

Too Jewish for ethnically repressed Hollywood.