Michael Feinstein celebrates the Great American Songbook

Feinstein noted that many female singers are more revered and remembered than their male counterparts. He recalled the great jazz singer Margaret Whiting, who, when Feinstein first moved to New York in his early 20s, took him around to various nightclubs, restaurants and hangouts and introduced him to what he now refers to as "the gang," the nightclub community of that period.

He admires Lena Horne and Judy Garland as women who could galvanize audiences when they were on stage. He remembers seeing Horne in Palm Beach Florida, performing before an audience that wasn't reacting to her. He watched Horne rev the audience up until she had them standing and cheering.

"I'll never forget that," he said. "It was a lesson not only in song interpretation, but in showmanship."
The great jazz singer Rosemary Clooney was a second mom to Feinstein.

"I'm celebrating the great mothers of song," he said. "Because when I think of Mother Earth I think of Spring. I think of people and voices who nurtured us, not only musically but spiritually."

Feinstein's storied life includes getting to know one of the fathers of song as well, the great Ira Gershwin. He met Gershwin in 1977, when he was twenty and Gershwin was eighty. Gershwin became Feinstein's employer, hiring the young man to catalog his collection of phonograph records and memorabilia. Feinstein spent six years as Gershwin's personal assistant and was named in Gershwin's will as his literary executor. It was a life-changing experience for Feinstein. He said that meeting and working with one of the creators of the music he loves changed the way he interprets the songs.