Writers and historians have dubbed the twenties the Jazz Age, and there is more than a little truth to that tag.
Jazz in its early forms had just begun to catch the public fancy as America went to war in 1917. That year was also the date of the first out-and-out jazz recording (“Darktown Strutters Ball,” played by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band on Columbia). Two years later “the war to end all wars” had been won and the peace settlement worked out, and America went home free from foreign entanglement.
In 1920 the Volstead Act, ushered into law by Congressman Andrew Volstead and known nationally as Prohibition, was passed. It forbade the manufacture and public sale of alcoholic beverages and was considered a triumph for all right-thinking people. The flouting of the law became a national pastime. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a drink, and more people than ever began to partake.
Like jazz, dancing had begun to take hold in the prewar years. It gave rise to a new industry, the construction of large ballrooms, such as Roseland, which opened in 1919 in Philadelphia but soon moved to New York, where it is still operating. These places were built because the masses, who could not afford to dance at the posh hotels, demanded them. And the demand for good dance music initiated the dance-band era….
These larger bands were also in demand for nightclubs, an outgrowth of the cabaret life that had started before World War I. They were also needed to play the increasingly complex scores for silent pictures in the thousands of lavish movie theaters being built across the country. Some of the smaller towns, with smaller theaters, got by with perhaps an organ or a trio of violin, saxophone, and piano, but the larger cities used large orchestras.
Nightclubs serve alcohol, and much of the financing and ownership of nightclubs, and almost all of the illicit booze, was controlled by gangsters, who flourished in every city and many smaller towns. Competition among mobs kept newspapers filled with lurid stories of shoot-outs, one-way rides, and unexplained disappearances. Many larger cities were run by dishonest politicians who worked with the gang bosses.
Some of the dances of the period, particularly the Charleston and later the lindy hop, lent them-selves to jazz music. Musicians became more proficient on their instruments, which were better made than those of the previous generation. Dancing, nightclubs, and movies were our national pastimes, along with drinking illegal whiskey. Many places that became bars after Repeal in 1933 started as speakeasies, where special passwords whispered through a slot in the door, or “membership” cards for the better places, gained one admittance to the world of forbidden intoxicants.
The phonograph industry grew tremendously after World War I.Acoustic recording was supplant-ed by the electric method introduced by ColumbiaRecords in the mid-twenties. Much of the new recording activity was devoted to jazz…. -- Excerpt from the liner notes
Sweet and Low Blues: Big Bands and Territory Bands of the 20s
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Static Strut
Yellen, Wall, Specht
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Symphonic Raps
Stevens, Abrams
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The Boy in the Boat
Charlie Johnson
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That's How I Feel Today
Fats Waller
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Sweet and Low Blues
Jabo Smith
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Till Times Get Better
Jabo Smith
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Willow Tree
Waller, Razaf
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What Is This Thing Called Love?
Cole Porter
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Starvation Blues
Jesse Stone
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Blue Devil Blues
Walter Page
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There's a Squabblin'
Basie
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Dreamland Blues: Part I
Troy Floyd
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Dreamland Blues: Part II
Troy Floyd
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Ruff-Scuffling
Jesse Stone
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Black and Blue Rhapsody
Bingie Madison
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After You've Gone
Creamer, Layton
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I've Found a New Baby
Spencer Williams, Jack Palmer
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