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Thanks to bookpleasures.com and Kathyrn Atwood for allowing us to reprint this review
By Dawn Williams
Ted Lewis, a clarinetist and showman with a decades-long career, was one of the first Northern bandleaders to try to master jazz. He also secretly fathered an out-of-wedlock daughter. Dawn Williams, the daughter in question, has attempted to combine her own biography with that of her father in her slightly uneven but ultimately rewarding book, “Me and My Father’s Shadow.”
Conceived during a one-night stand and brought up by a single mother, Williams had a childhood fascination with Ted Lewis, and often put on her own shows where she would imitate Lewis’ famed “Me and My Shadow” routine. She wasn’t told the details of her paternity until she was an adult and it was then that she developed an urge to learn more about her father and write his biography.
Although the discovery that an individual has been secretly fathered by a celebrity always makes for an interesting story, Williams includes too much extraneous information in the first half of the book (her autobiography) to actually make this so; some streamlined editing would have made this section much more compelling. As it is, the reader must slosh through some pretty dull stuff before getting to chapter 20 where Williams discovers the truth regarding her paternity.
But the second half of the book — the Ted Lewis biography - is quite a payoff. Ted Lewis had a long and successful career which began in New York City’s Tin Pan Alley and sailed through the years of radio, film and television. While portraying her father’s insatiable drive to succeed in the entertainment industry and his subsequent stardom, Lewis has brought a
slice of American entertainment history sharply into focus and that is a significant achievement.
“My Father’s Shadow” is a rewarding read for those with an interest in the history of American entertainment and also provides the origin of the phrase made famous by Lewis: “is everybody happy?” Buy Dawn’s book at Amazon”
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