Vastly detailed, all-inclusive, but largely superficial and
awkwardly organized: a survey of all the popular music in the
1920's, "when elements of black and white music first achieved a
rich and permanent fusion." After a brief introduction that
recycles familiar generalizations about the period, Shaw (Honkers
and Shouters, Fifty-Second Street) profiles the major jazz
innovators - from the New Orleans dixieland bands to King Oliver,
Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Bix Beiderbecke, along with
nods to influential bandleaders "Pops" Whiteman and Fletcher
Henderson. Then comes a short section on the Harlem Renaissance
("there was enchantment in the very air of Harlem") - touching on
Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, the Cotton Club, and stride piano,
but emphasizing the proliferation of the blues while saluting both
famous and little-known black songwriters. (One of Shaw's few
interpretive notions - an iffy one - surfaces here: "That there was
something desperate in the prolonged binge of the twenties was made
most evident, I submit, by the vogue of the blues.") The bulk
(nearly half) of the book, however, is devoted to a year-by-year
"Tin Pan Alley" chronicle, 1920-1929, which details the top songs
of each year, along with notable concerts, vaudeville shows,
musicals and revues, radio/recording developments, plus
thumbnail-sketches (rather arbitrarily inserted) of composers and
performers. The result, though certainly informative, is chaotic,
wildly repetitious, and occasionally even misleading. (Al Jolson,
though a superstar from about 1918 on, isn't profiled until the
chapter on 1928.) And more repetition follows - in a chapter on
"The Musical Theatre," which somewhat oddly singles out Cole Porter
(who may have had a 1920's sensibility but whose major work didn't
come till the 1930's). Throughout, Shaw - whose own prose is
sturdily pleasant at best - quotes extensively from such reliable
sources as James Lincoln Collier, Alec Wilder, and David Ewen; also
from memoirs and biographies (lots of familiar anecdotes). So
there's little that's fresh or stimulating here. But, with a strong
bibliography and a generous discography, it's a serviceable
compendium in the Ewen tradition. (Kirkus Reviews)
`The Roaring Twenties' - the time when Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, Gershwin, Berlin, and Porter all burst onto the musical scene.
Covering blues, jazz, band music, torch ballads, operettas, and musicals, Arnold Shaw's lively account embraces all the major personalities of the Jazz Age, from instrumentalists to composers, singers to lyricists. It also includes a bibliography, a detailed discography, and lists of songs and relevant films from the 1920s.
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