Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas was published by Random House in 1976. The third autobiography covers approximately 1949-1955: Angelou’s marriage to Tosh Angelos (a Greek-American sailor), her work in a San Francisco record store where she became steeped in jazz, her entry into professional dance and theater, and her triumphant but guilt-ridden tour with the State Department production of Porgy and Bess through Europe and Africa.
The volume’s central tension is between artistic ambition and maternal duty. Angelou leaves her young son Guy with her mother while she tours internationally with Porgy and Bess — and the guilt of that separation shadows the entire experience. The tour itself is vividly rendered: postwar Europe, North Africa, the company’s internal dramas, the experience of being a Black American artist abroad (where race operates differently than at home). Angelou is discovering that she is genuinely talented — that her body and voice are instruments of real artistic power — but the price of that discovery is distance from her child.
The book is the most joyful of Angelou’s autobiographies: it describes the pleasure of artistic discovery, of finding work that matches one’s abilities, of being surrounded by gifted colleagues. But Angelou’s honesty prevents simple celebration — the joy is always shadowed by guilt and by the knowledge that artistic freedom came at a cost.
Collecting Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas
First edition (Random House, New York, 1976): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $50–$150
- Very good: $20–$50
- Signed: $100–$250
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the third autobiography cover? Singin’ and Swingin’ (1976) covers Angelou’s years as a performer — her marriage to Tosh Angelos, her career as a nightclub singer and dancer, and her role in the touring company of Porgy and Bess. The memoir captures the excitement and instability of a performer’s life in the 1950s and the tension between Angelou’s ambitions and her responsibilities as a single mother.