Review: 700 Sundays, by Billy Crystal

700 Sundays is not the book I anticipated.

It’s written by Billy Crystal, so it’s hilarious, right?

Crystal sprinkles humor into his autobiography. But the book is—while not altogether dark—colored with sadness.

The book’s title comes from the number of Sundays Crystal had with his father, Jack, before Jack died suddenly of heart attack, in a bowling alley. Bill Crystal was 15. Jack was 56.

Jack Crystal lived a unique and interesting life, running a small record store, producing jazz records on the family label (“Commodore”) and running concerts for some of the greatest jazz musicians of the 50s and 60s:

So when I was a kid growing up, my father was now managing the Commodore Music Shop and he had become the authority on jazz and jazz records in the city. And this little store—it was only nine feet wide—was now the center of jazz not only in New York City but in the world, because that little mail order business was now third worldwide behind Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward, just selling Commodore and other jazz records.

Commodore’s roster included Billie Holliday, who recorded “Strange Fruit” on the label, which Time Magazine later called the song of the century:

But her most important song was one called “Strange Fruit,” which was very controversial because it was about lynching black people down South. Nobody wanted to hear this song. When Billie introduced the song at the Café Society, nobody wanted to be reminded about what was happening in our America of 1939, and nobody would record “Strange Fruit.” Even her great producer at Columbia Records, John Hammond, wouldn’t touch it. She was frustrated, so she turned to her friend, my Uncle Milt. And he told me years later she sang it for him the first time a cappella. Can you imagine that? That aching voice and that aching lyric. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, blood on the leaves and blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze. Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees . . .” He told me, “Billy, I cried like a baby. And I said to her, ‘Lady Day, listen, I don’t care if we sell one record. People must hear this song. They’ve got to hear this song. We’ve got to get this made somehow.’” So they worked out a special arrangement with Vocalian Records, and Billie Holiday, a great black jazz artist, and my Jewish Uncle Milt together recorded “Strange Fruit” a song about lynching down South, the song that Time magazine in December of 1999 would call the song of the century. I’m so proud to say it’s on the family label, the Commodore.

As musical tastes changed, Jack watched his record business fade. His store was swamped by the emerging wave of large record chains taking over the industry.

Jack’s life would never be the same. Neither would Billy’s. And too soon, his father, lost, unsure of his next steps in life, was gone.

Crystal writes about “The Otherness” the weight one carries around after the loss of a loved one. He was sixteen, and real life had had its way with him far too soon:

I called it the “otherness” because that’s how I felt. I wasn’t here. I wasn’t there. I was in an other place. A place where you look, but you don’t really see, a place where you hear but you don’t really listen. It was “the otherness” of it all.

He struggled. His mom struggled.

Eventually, with the support of extended family—particularly his Uncle Milt, who became a powerful record producer—Crystal found his way to comedy, something he always knew he wanted to do even as a kid.

You won’t read tales from the sets of “Soap” or “Saturday Night Live” here. Crystal’s book isn’t about fame and fortune.

It’s about family, and change, and loss. And it’s a great read.

You can pick up “700 Sundays” at Amazon.