Frank Sinatra, Mitch Miller and the Great American Song

This week author Ben Yagoda joins Nate to talk about his book “The B Side: The Death of Tin Pan Alley and the Rebirth of the Great American Song.”

In this episode, Ben and Nate discuss the golden age of American song -- a time when writers like Cole Porter and George Gershwin wrote songs that worked on Broadway, on the radio, in dance clubs and as source material for great jazz and how that era ended after world war 2. It wasn’t rock and roll that almost killed Frank Sinatra’s career -- it was Columbia producer Mitch Miller.