F. Scott Fitzgerald named it, Louis Armstrong launched it, Paul Whiteman and Fletcher Henderson orchestrated it, and now Arnold Shaw chronicles this fabulous era in his marvelously engrossing book, appropriately called The Jazz Age. Enriching his account with lively anecdotes and inside
stories, he describes the astonishing outpouring of significant musical innovations that emerged during the "Roaring Twenties"--including blues, jazz, band music, torch ballads, operettas, and musicals--and sets them against the background of the Prohibition world of the Flapper and the Gangster.
The Jazz Age offers an insider's view into the significant developments and personalities of the jazz age, including the maturation and Americanization of the Broadway musical theater, the explosion of the arts celebrated in the Harlem Renaissance, the rise of the Classic Blues Singers, and
the evolution of ragtime into stride piano. It also contains a bibliography, detailed discography, and listings of the songs of the twenties in Variety's "Golden 100" and of films featuring singers and songwriters of the era.
F. Scott Fitzgerald named it, Louis Armstrong launched it, Paul Whiteman and Fletcher Henderson orchestrated it, and now Arnold Shaw chronicles this fabulous era in his marvelously engrossing book, appropriately called The Jazz Age. Enriching his account with lively anecdotes and inside
stories, he describes the astonishing outpouring of significant musical innovations that emerged during the "Roaring Twenties"--including blues, jazz, band music, torch ballads, operettas, and musicals--and sets them against the background of the Prohibition world of the Flapper and the Gangster.
The Jazz Age offers an insider's view into the significant developments and personalities of the jazz age, including the maturation and Americanization of the Broadway musical theater, the explosion of the arts celebrated in the Harlem Renaissance, the rise of the Classic Blues Singers, and
the evolution of ragtime into stride piano. It also contains a bibliography, detailed discography, and listings of the songs of the twenties in Variety's "Golden 100" and of films featuring singers and songwriters of the era.
Arnold Shaw, winner of three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, and author of such books as Honkers and Shouters, The Dictionary of Pop/Rock, Black Popular Music in America, and Fifty-Second Street, and biographies of Sinatra and Belafonte, is Director of the Popular Music Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"I am deeply moved by Arnold Shaw's The Jazz Age."--Quincy Jones,
Grammy Award winner
"A unique portrayal of the 1920s."--Library Journal
"As one who grew up in the 1920s, and has been reading Arnold Shaw
with admiration for some twenty-odd years, I read The Jazz Age not
only nostalgically, but also with gratitude to one who tells us so
much, and so knowledgeably, about what lay behind the music that I
and many others of our generation simply took--at the time--for
granted."--Henry Pleasants
"Vastly detailed, all-inclusive."--Kirkus Reviews
"[Shaw opens] a Pandora's box of musical memories, dispelling
present ambiguities and inviting the reader to a nostalgic backward
journey when life seemed less complex and more
carefree."--America
"I am deeply moved by Arnold Shaw's The Jazz Age."--Quincy Jones,
Grammy Award winner
"A unique portrayal of the 1920s."--Library Journal
"As one who grew up in the 1920s, and has been reading Arnold Shaw
with admiration for some twenty-odd years, I read The Jazz Age not
only nostalgically, but also with gratitude to one who tells us so
much, and so knowledgeably, about what lay behind the music that I
and many others of our generation simply took--at the time--for
granted."--Henry Pleasants
"Vastly detailed, all-inclusive."--Kirkus Reviews
"[Shaw opens] a Pandora's box of musical memories, dispelling
present ambiguities and inviting the reader to a nostalgic backward
journey when life seemed less complex and more
carefree."--America
"Shaw has written a series of lively chronicles of the songs,
dances, musicals, operettas, records, road shows, night clubs,
publishing houses, and the persons behind them....[Shaw opens] a
Pandora's box of musical memories, dispelling present ambiguities
and inviting the reader to a nostalgic backward journey when life
seemed less complex and more carefree."--America
"A lively volume."--New York City Tribune
"Shaw documents [the jazz age] accurately and...in great
detail."--Grammy Pulse
"Shaw's history of the 1920s is first-rate in that it incorporates
"Popular Music of the 1920s" as the subtitle says, [and] gives us
atmosphere and quite a lot of peripheral things which went on and
affected the United States during the period. This is fun reading;
a joy that shouldn't be missed."--West Coast Review of Books
"First-rate....A joy that shouldn't be missed."--West Coast Review
of Books
"For everyone with an insatiable appetite for the choice anecdote
and the savory fact....There is information on nearly a thousand
tunes....It reminds the reader of contemporaneous events, from
prohibition and bathtub gin to 'talkies,' and relates them to the
musical scene. After all, as Fitzgerald's appelation has always
claimed, everything moved to the music."--Borders Review of Books
"I am deeply moved by Arnold Shaw's The Jazz Age."--Quincy Jones, Grammy Award winner "A unique portrayal of the 1920s."--Library Journal "As one who grew up in the 1920s, and has been reading Arnold Shaw with admiration for some twenty-odd years, I read The Jazz Age not only nostalgically, but also with gratitude to one who tells us so much, and so knowledgeably, about what lay behind the music that I and many others of our generation simply took--at the time--for granted."--Henry Pleasants "Vastly detailed, all-inclusive."--Kirkus Reviews "[Shaw opens] a Pandora's box of musical memories, dispelling present ambiguities and inviting the reader to a nostalgic backward journey when life seemed less complex and more carefree."--America "I am deeply moved by Arnold Shaw's The Jazz Age."--Quincy Jones, Grammy Award winner "A unique portrayal of the 1920s."--Library Journal "As one who grew up in the 1920s, and has been reading Arnold Shaw with admiration for some twenty-odd years, I read The Jazz Age not only nostalgically, but also with gratitude to one who tells us so much, and so knowledgeably, about what lay behind the music that I and many others of our generation simply took--at the time--for granted."--Henry Pleasants "Vastly detailed, all-inclusive."--Kirkus Reviews "[Shaw opens] a Pandora's box of musical memories, dispelling present ambiguities and inviting the reader to a nostalgic backward journey when life seemed less complex and more carefree."--America "Shaw has written a series of lively chronicles of the songs, dances, musicals, operettas, records, road shows, night clubs, publishing houses, and the persons behind them....[Shaw opens] a Pandora's box of musical memories, dispelling present ambiguities and inviting the reader to a nostalgic backward journey when life seemed less complex and more carefree."--America "A lively volume."--New York City Tribune "Shaw documents [the jazz age] accurately and...in great detail."--Grammy Pulse "Shaw's history of the 1920s is first-rate in that it incorporates "Popular Music of the 1920s" as the subtitle says, [and] gives us atmosphere and quite a lot of peripheral things which went on and affected the United States during the period. This is fun reading; a joy that shouldn't be missed."--West Coast Review of Books "First-rate....A joy that shouldn't be missed."--West Coast Review of Books "For everyone with an insatiable appetite for the choice anecdote and the savory fact....There is information on nearly a thousand tunes....It reminds the reader of contemporaneous events, from prohibition and bathtub gin to 'talkies,' and relates them to the musical scene. After all, as Fitzgerald's appelation has always claimed, everything moved to the music."--Borders Review of Books
According to popular music historian Shaw (Honkers and Shouters, the jazz age began in 1917, with the appearance at Reisenweber's in New York of the all-white Original Dixieland Jazz Band and their first recordings of ``the new music.'' The years between then and the Wall Street crash of 1929often recalled as the roaring, torrid, frenzied '20swere a period seemingly dominated by flappers, gangsters and traffic in illegal booze but also, as Shaw demonstrates, by a fusion of black and white music and a plethora of revues, operettas and musical comedies created by ``a flock of gemlike show composers.'' Drawing heavily on books by Gerald Boardman, David Ewen and Charles Hamm, and reprinting anecdotes from the lives of the people he catalogues, Shaw presents, in roughly chronological order, the achievements of Bix, Cole, Duke, Eubie, Flo, Hoagy, Jelly Roll, Satchmo, Vincent (Lopez and Youmans), Berlin, Gershwin, Kern, Rodgers, ``Smack'' Henderson, ``Pops'' Whiteman and many other song writers and pluggers, lyricists, publishers and literary wits. Discography, lists of bestselling songs and film biographies. (September)
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
