Anthony Heilbut
Encyclopedia
Anthony Heilbut is an American writer, and record producer
of gospel music
. He is noted for his biography of Thomas Mann
, and has also won a Grammy Award
.
.
Anthony Heilbut, the son of German Jewish refugees, Bertha and Otto Heilbut, was born in New York. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University when he was 25. For the next ten years he taught, first at New York University and then at Hunter College. Since 1976 he has been a full-time writer and record producer.
Heilbut's first book, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, was published in 1971 and has been updated several times since then; a "25th Anniversary Edition" appeared in 1997.
James Baldwin
said,
Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from 1930s to the Present was published in 1983 and updated in 1997. It was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. In 2003, a conference entitled "Exiled in Paradise," was held at Los Angeles' Villa Aurora, the palatial residence of Lion Feuchtwanger
, one of the best known emigre writers. (Ironically Feuchtwanger's famous novel, The Oppermanns, was inspired by Otto Heilbut's cousin Wilfried Israel. Wilfried, whom Christopher Isherwood called "the greatest man I ever met," was also the inspiration for the character of Herr Landauer in Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.)
Heilbut's Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature was published in 1996. The New York Times
called the book "brilliant" and "astonishing." Colm Toibin
in The London Review of Books called it "brilliantly perceptive," and the London Independent called it "endlessly stimulating." In 1997 it received the Randy Shilts Prize for Gay Non-Fiction from the Lambda Literary Society.
He has written reviews and articles for, among others, The New York Times Book Review
, The Nation
, Truthdig
, The New Yorker
, Dimensions
, The Village Voice
, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Black Women in America, and The Encyclopedia of New York City
.
He has appeared in several documentaries including "Rejoice and Shout" (2011) and "Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock and Roll" (2011).
(Columbia) by Mahalia Jackson
has won a Grammy Award; Prayer Changes Things (Atlantic) by Marion Williams
has won a Grand Prix du Disque; and Precious Lord: The Great Gospel Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey (Sony) was the first gospel album to be included in the Library of Congress' National Directory.
He has produced albums for many labels. Since 1987 he has been the president, sole producer, literary editor, and janitor of Spirit Feel Records, which is distributed by Shanachie Records. He jokes that the critical reception has been "as full-throated as a gospel solo." Ten Spirit Feel albums have received five-star reviews from Rolling Stone
. The magazine even called Marion Williams
, Heilbut's most heralded artist, "the greatest singer ever." Thanks largely to her recordings for Spirit Feel, Williams received both the MacArthur Genius Award and the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993, tragically just a few months before her death.
Other gospel greats Heilbut has produced include The Dixie Hummingbirds
, Professor Alex Bradford, Dorothy Love Coates
, Bessie Griffin
, Reverend Claude Jeter, R. H. Harris, Inez Andrews
, The Roberta Martin Singers
, Sallie Martin
, J. Robert Bradley
, Robert Anderson
, Willie Mae Ford Smith
, The Stars of Faith and Delois Barrett Campbell. He says "it has been the thrill of my lifetime to work with my singing idols."
He has also produced reissues and career over-views of Edna Gallmon Cooke
, The Fairfield Four
, and his good friend Sister Rosetta Tharpe
. He has written close to one hundred liner notes. In 2010 he produced a combination cd/dvd, How Sweet It Was: The Sights and Sounds of Traditional Gospel. In 2011 he annotated and co-produced Aretha Franklin The Great American Songbook.
Spirit Feel albums have not sold well. The famous photographer David Gahr
once quipped, "I never heard of a label getting such great reviews and selling so few records." But the outlook isn't totally bleak. In 2005, after Marion Williams
album, Remember Me
, was released, Heilbut was interviewed by Michelle Norris
on National Public Radio, and overnight, the album soared to #16 on amazon.com. Williams' Spirit Feel recordings can be heard on the sound-tracks of movies like Fried Green Tomatoes and Mississippi Marsala, and even in the spectacularly successful video game, Scene It.
Heilbut's next book will be The Fan Who Knew Too Much, a collection of cultural essays to be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2012.
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
of gospel music
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
. He is noted for his biography of Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, and has also won a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
.
Life
He has a doctorate in English from Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
.
Anthony Heilbut, the son of German Jewish refugees, Bertha and Otto Heilbut, was born in New York. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University when he was 25. For the next ten years he taught, first at New York University and then at Hunter College. Since 1976 he has been a full-time writer and record producer.
Heilbut's first book, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, was published in 1971 and has been updated several times since then; a "25th Anniversary Edition" appeared in 1997.
James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
said,
It's a very beautiful book, with love and precision, no pity -- a little like a gospel song ... I didn't know that anybody knew that much about it, or cared that much, or could be so tough and lucid.Counter-Punch magazine selected it as one of its top 100 books of the 20th century.
Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America from 1930s to the Present was published in 1983 and updated in 1997. It was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. In 2003, a conference entitled "Exiled in Paradise," was held at Los Angeles' Villa Aurora, the palatial residence of Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger was a German-Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht....
, one of the best known emigre writers. (Ironically Feuchtwanger's famous novel, The Oppermanns, was inspired by Otto Heilbut's cousin Wilfried Israel. Wilfried, whom Christopher Isherwood called "the greatest man I ever met," was also the inspiration for the character of Herr Landauer in Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.)
Heilbut's Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature was published in 1996. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the book "brilliant" and "astonishing." Colm Toibin
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
in The London Review of Books called it "brilliantly perceptive," and the London Independent called it "endlessly stimulating." In 1997 it received the Randy Shilts Prize for Gay Non-Fiction from the Lambda Literary Society.
He has written reviews and articles for, among others, The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
, The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Truthdig
Truthdig
Truthdig is a Web magazine that provides a mix of long-form articles, interviews, and blog-like commentary on current events, delivered from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major "digs" led by authorities in their fields who write multifaceted pieces about contemporary, often...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Dimensions
Dimensions
Dimensions is a French project that makes educational movies about mathematics, focusing on spatial geometry. It uses POV-Ray to render some of the animations, and the films are release under a Creative Commons licence....
, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Black Women in America, and The Encyclopedia of New York City
The Encyclopedia of New York City
The Encyclopedia of New York City is a comprehensive reference book on New York City. Historian and Columbia University professor Kenneth T...
.
He has appeared in several documentaries including "Rejoice and Shout" (2011) and "Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Godmother of Rock and Roll" (2011).
Producer
Heilbut is probably best known as a record producer. He has produced anthologies of jazz, country music, white gospel, and even opera (50 Great Moments in Opera has sold over 700,000 albums), but his specialty is black gospel music. Among his productions, How I got OverHow I Got Over
How I Got Over is a Gospel hymn composed and published in 1951 by Clara Ward . Notable recordings of this work have been made by Mahalia Jackson , Aretha Franklin , and the Blind Boys of Alabama How I Got Over is a Gospel hymn composed and published in 1951 by Clara Ward (1924-1973). Notable...
(Columbia) by Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson
Mahalia Jackson – January 27, 1972) was an African-American gospel singer. Possessing a powerful contralto voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of Gospel"...
has won a Grammy Award; Prayer Changes Things (Atlantic) by Marion Williams
Marion Williams
Marion Williams was an American gospel singer.-Early years:Marion Williams was born in Miami, Florida, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to help support the family, and worked as a maid, a nurse, and in factories and...
has won a Grand Prix du Disque; and Precious Lord: The Great Gospel Songs of Thomas A. Dorsey (Sony) was the first gospel album to be included in the Library of Congress' National Directory.
He has produced albums for many labels. Since 1987 he has been the president, sole producer, literary editor, and janitor of Spirit Feel Records, which is distributed by Shanachie Records. He jokes that the critical reception has been "as full-throated as a gospel solo." Ten Spirit Feel albums have received five-star reviews from Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
. The magazine even called Marion Williams
Marion Williams
Marion Williams was an American gospel singer.-Early years:Marion Williams was born in Miami, Florida, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to help support the family, and worked as a maid, a nurse, and in factories and...
, Heilbut's most heralded artist, "the greatest singer ever." Thanks largely to her recordings for Spirit Feel, Williams received both the MacArthur Genius Award and the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993, tragically just a few months before her death.
Other gospel greats Heilbut has produced include The Dixie Hummingbirds
The Dixie Hummingbirds
The Dixie Hummingbirds are an influential American gospel music group, spanning more than 80 years from the jubilee quartet style of the 1920s, through the "hard gospel" quartet style of Gospel's golden age in the 1940s and 1950s, to the eclectic pop-tinged songs of today.-History:Formed in 1928 in...
, Professor Alex Bradford, Dorothy Love Coates
Dorothy Love Coates
Dorothy Love Coates was an American gospel singer.-Early years:Born Dorothy McGriff in Birmingham, Alabama, her early years were hard, . Her minister father left the family when she was six, divorcing her mother thereafter...
, Bessie Griffin
Bessie Griffin
Bessie Griffin was an African American gospel singer.Born Arlette B. Broil in New Orleans, Louisiana, she was steeped in church music as a child...
, Reverend Claude Jeter, R. H. Harris, Inez Andrews
Inez Andrews
Inez Andrews is an American gospel singer and recording artist.-Biography:In 1957, Andrews became a member of the gospel group The Caravans; she auditioned for Albertina Walker and Dorothy Norwood, and they sent for her in Chicago...
, The Roberta Martin Singers
The Roberta Martin Singers
-Career:The Roberta Martin Singers were an African-American gospel group based in the United States. The group was founded in 1933 by Roberta Martin, who in that same year had just become acquainted with the then new trend of Christian music known as gospel, which was different than the traditional...
, Sallie Martin
Sallie Martin
Sallie Martin was a gospel singer nicknamed "the mother of gospel music" for her efforts to popularize the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey and her influence on other artists. Raised as a Baptist in Pittfield, Georgia, she joined the Pentecostal movement as a young woman...
, J. Robert Bradley
J. Robert Bradley
John Robert Lee Bradley was an American gospel music singer. He was the favorite singer of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and was nicknamed "Mr...
, Robert Anderson
Robert Anderson (singer)
Robert Anderson was an American gospel singer and composer.-Early years:Robert Anderson was born in Anguilla, Mississippi, and moved to Chicago with his family as a child. During his childhood, Anderson learned piano by ear and assisted Roberta Martin with coaching the Sunday school choir at the...
, Willie Mae Ford Smith
Willie Mae Ford Smith
Willie Mae Ford , also known as Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith, was an American gospel singer.-Early years:Born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee as a child...
, The Stars of Faith and Delois Barrett Campbell. He says "it has been the thrill of my lifetime to work with my singing idols."
He has also produced reissues and career over-views of Edna Gallmon Cooke
Edna Gallmon Cooke
Madame Edna Gallmon Cooke was a renowned gospel singer and recording artist from 1949 until her death in 1967. Personal information about Ms. Cooke is scarce and most of her biographical details have been gleaned from the liner notes of her various albums. Ms...
, The Fairfield Four
The Fairfield Four
The Fairfield Four is a gospel group that has existed for over 80 years. They started as a trio in Nashville, Tennessee's Fairfield Baptist Church in 1921. They were designated as National Heritage Fellows in 1989 by the National Endowment for the Arts. The group won the 1998 Grammy for Best...
, and his good friend Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...
. He has written close to one hundred liner notes. In 2010 he produced a combination cd/dvd, How Sweet It Was: The Sights and Sounds of Traditional Gospel. In 2011 he annotated and co-produced Aretha Franklin The Great American Songbook.
Spirit Feel albums have not sold well. The famous photographer David Gahr
David Gahr
David Gahr was an American photographer. He was one of "the pre-eminent photographers of American folk, blues, jazz and rock musicians of the 1960s and beyond." ....
once quipped, "I never heard of a label getting such great reviews and selling so few records." But the outlook isn't totally bleak. In 2005, after Marion Williams
Marion Williams
Marion Williams was an American gospel singer.-Early years:Marion Williams was born in Miami, Florida, to a religiously devout mother and musically inclined father. She left school when she was nine years old to help support the family, and worked as a maid, a nurse, and in factories and...
album, Remember Me
Remember Me
- Songs :* "Remember Me" * "Remember Me" , 2001* "Remember Me" , 1998* "Remember Me" , 2002* "Remember Me" , 1970* "Remember Me" - Songs :* "Remember Me" (Blue Boy song)* "Remember Me" (British Sea Power song), 2001* "Remember Me" (Journey song), 1998* "Remember Me" (Hoobastank song), 2002*...
, was released, Heilbut was interviewed by Michelle Norris
Michelle Norris
Michelle Suzanne Claire “Chuck” Norris MC, RAMC is a British lance corporal and medic noted for heroism in the 2003 Iraq conflict.-Early life:Norris was born at Stourbridge, West Midlands, England.-Military career:...
on National Public Radio, and overnight, the album soared to #16 on amazon.com. Williams' Spirit Feel recordings can be heard on the sound-tracks of movies like Fried Green Tomatoes and Mississippi Marsala, and even in the spectacularly successful video game, Scene It.
Heilbut's next book will be The Fan Who Knew Too Much, a collection of cultural essays to be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2012.
Works
- The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (1975)
- Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America (1983)
- Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1995)