Life
Thomas Zachariah Glazer was born in Philadelphia on 2 September 1914 to Russian émigré parents from Minsk. His father, a carpenter in a shipyard, died during the 1918 flu epidemic, and Glazer was brought up by a series of relatives before being placed in the Hebrew Orphan Home in Philadelphia with his two brothers; his younger brother Sidney Glazier was to become a producer, most notably of Mel Brooks' The Producers. Their father's record collection influenced Glazer musically, and at school he learned to play the tuba, guitar and bass. At 17, he hitchhiked to New York where he took night course to complete his education while working at Macy's during the day. He subsequently attended City College of New York for 3 years.
Glazer moved to Washington D.C and began work at the Library of Congress. There he met Alan Lomax who worked for cataloguing American folksongs, and who was a great influence. Glazer began performing as an amateur and was invited by Eleanor Roosevelt to perform at the White House for soldiers working there as guards. He made a successful professional début at the New York City Town Hall in January 1943 during a blizzard, and in 1945 had a radio show Tom Glazer's Ballad Box. His songs of the period, such as "A Dollar Ain't a Dollar Anymore", "Our Fight is Yours", "When the Country is Broke", and "Talking Inflation Blues" took strong social stands. Glazer's songs were recorded by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Perry Como and Frank Sinatra. He was part of the strong folk music scene in New York in the 1940s, and with Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Josh White helped prepare for the commercially successful folk revival of the 1960s. "He wasn't fancy," Seeger reported after his death "He was just straightforward. He had a good sense of humor."
Glazer married to Miriam Reed Eisenberg with whom he had two sons. The marriage ended in divorce in 1974.
Glazer recorded a number of children's records in the late 1940s and early 1950s with Young People's Records, Inc. These included When I Grow Up, The Chugging Freight Engine, and Come to the Fair. In the 1960s he hosted a weekly children's show for children on WQXR radio in New York.
Read more about this topic: Tom Glazer
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them; he has lived for a long time who has little lived.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)