American Popular Music

1
American Popular Music

• Dr. Joseph Harchanko
• Week 2 - Monday
• Chapter 3

2
Elements of Music Modern Music Industry (1910)

• Pattern of fierce competition between companies
  (publishing)
  
• Mass promotion across media (newspaper, theaters,
  dep. stores, cat.)
  
• Highly asymmetrical ratio of hits and duds
• Dom. of limited forms and lyrics

3
Change in 1920s and 1930s

• Supplanting of sheet music with phonographs
• Rise of network radio and sound film
• Increased influence of African American genres
  such as jazz and blues.

4
Innovations
mid 1920s- phonograph disc sales surpassed
sheet music
1925- Electric recording replaces acoustic
recording, paving way for crooners
1906- First radio broadcast (Mass.)
5
Network Radio

• 1896 - Marconi awarded patent for radio
• 1922- 564 independent stations
• 1922- Telephone lines used to transmit Chicago
  football game to NY
  
• 1926- First radio network (NBC)
• What is the effect of Networks?

6
Further happenings of the 1920s

• Jazz Singer (1927)
• The Broadway Melody (1929)
• ASCAP
• Big publishers and recordings companies
  controlled exposure Tin Pan Alley songs, ball
  room dance bands
  
• Smaller sales in classical, race, hillbilly
  records

7
Freak Dances
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vYzC1h2XnmwY
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Freak Dances

• Cakewalk
• WW I era rise of dance hall and cabarets
• Turkey trot, fox trot, grizzly bear
• Tango- ball room, habanera, light opera, gaucho
  ballads (NY 1910)

9
Europe and Castles
Vernon and Irene Castle
James Reese Europe (1880-1919)
10
When you think of Europe
11
You think of castles.
12
Castle House Rag

• 1914 James Reese Europe
• A B A rounded binary (also AABBA or AA BA BA

A
A
B
B
A
C
C
D
D
E
E
F
What piece used a similar form?
13
The Jazz Age -Why it was dangerous

• What is Jazz?

Indigenous American Art from founded my African
Americans, primarily in New Orleans
Improvisatory music
14
Where did it come from?

• New Orleans, around 1900
• Confluence of ragtime, marching bands, Mardi Gras
  and funeral processions, French and Italian
  opera, Caribbean and Mexican music, Tin Pan Alley
  songs, African American song tradition (gospel
  and blues)

15
Why was jazz dangerous?

• Alcohol consumption
• Indiscriminate sex
• Effeminacy
• Suicide
• Bestiality
• Insanity
• Indigestion

-N.Y. Times as sited in Starr and Waterman p.60
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Types of Jazz
19
The Legacy of Jazz

• Considered more art music today than popular
  music
  
• Cultural Vernacular
• Social factors