Not so long ago, songs by the Andrews Sisters and Lawrence Welk
blasted from phonographs, lilted over the radio, and dazzled
television viewers across the country. Lending star quality to the
ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians,
luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and 'Whoopee
John' Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In
this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful
corner of American social history as he traces the popularization
of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s.
Drawing on newspaper clippings, private collections, ethnic
societies, photographs, recordings, and interviews with musicians
and promoters, Greene chronicles the emergence of a new mass
culture that drew heavily on the vivid color, music, and dance of
ethnic communities. In this story of American ethnic music, with
its countless entertainers performing never-forgotten tunes in
hundreds of small cities around the country, Greene revises our
notion of how many Americans experienced cultural life. In the
polka belt, extending from Connecticut to Nebraska and from Texas
up to Minnesota and the Dakotas, not only were polkas, laendlers,
schottisches, and waltzes a musical passion, but they shone a
scintillating new light on the American cultural landscape. Greene
follows the fortunes of groups like the Gold Chain Bohemians,
illuminating the development of an important segment of American
popular music that fed the craze for international dance music. And
even though old-time music declined in the 1960s, overtaken by rock
and roll, a new Grammy for the polka was initiated in 1986. In its
ebullience and vitality, the genre endures.
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