Caryl Flinn

Caryl Flinn is the author of Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman released by U. California Press in November 2007. She has given talks on Merman in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Tucson, Iowa City, and Providence and has given interviews for WICN, WAMC, WILL, KERA, KWGS, SF television station KRON and online columns including broadwaystars.com. Her previous books, on film music, are geared to academic readers, Strains of Utopia (on classic Hollywood films) The New German Cinema; and an anthology, Music and Cinema. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals.

(posted June 02, 2008)
The ETHEL MERMAN FACTOID OF THE MONTH, June 2008
My goal is to update the site so as to post an interesting fact or trivia item about Ethel Merman at least once a month. Here is my posting for June 2008:
Although we think of Ethel as the quintessential belter, no one used the term to describe her until the early 1950s. Before then, she was called everything from a blues singer, jazz singer, a "rhythm girl," crooner, torch singer, and once in the 1930s, a coon shouter. For all previous postings, please review the Ethel page!