The Jazz Age was a boom time in the Bluff City. Murder was rampant, and politics were rough-and-tumble. First, Mayor Rowlett Paine and Boss E.H. Crump joined forces to fight the local Ku Klux Klan (and nearly lost). Then they turned on each other, and the political battle ensued. Other colorful characters weaving in and out of the story include Black political leader "Bob" Church, millionaire Clarence Saunders, Governor Austin Peay, evangelist Billy Sunday and even William Jennings Bryan. The city went on a building spree and a bootleg booze binge even as cotton prices plummeted. The Great Flood of 1927 added more strife with the addition of local refugees. Author Robert Lanier details these fascinating stories and more.
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 The Jazz Age. Spicing 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.
The Jazz Age was a boom time in the Bluff City. Murder was rampant, and politics were rough-and-tumble. First, Mayor Rowlett Paine and Boss E.H. Crump joined forces to fight the local Ku Klux Klan (and nearly lost). Then they turned on each other, and the political battle ensued. Other colorful characters weaving in and out of the story include Black political leader "Bob" Church, millionaire Clarence Saunders, Governor Austin Peay, evangelist Billy Sunday and even William Jennings Bryan. The city went on a building spree and a bootleg booze binge even as cotton prices plummeted. The Great Flood of 1927 added more strife with the addition of local refugees. Author Robert Lanier details these fascinating stories and more.
Prohibition, with all its crime, corruption, and cultural upheaval, ran its course after thirteen years in most of the rest of the country—but not in Memphis, where it lasted thirty years. Patrick O’Daniel takes a fresh look at those responsible for the rise and fall of Prohibition, its effect on Memphis, and the impact events in the city made on the rest of the state and country. Prohibition remains perhaps the most important issue to affect Memphis after the Civil War. It affected politics, religion, crime, the economy, and health, along with race and class. In Memphis, bootlegging bore a particular character shaped by its urban environment and the rural background of the city’s inhabitants. Religious fundamentalists and the Ku Klux Klan supported Prohibition, while the rebellious youth of the Jazz Age fought against it. Poor and working-class people took the brunt of Prohibition, while the wealthy skirted the law. Like the War on Drugs today, African Americans, immigrants, and poor whites made easy targets for law enforcement due to their lack of resources and effective legal counsel. Based on news reports and documents, O’Daniel’s lively account distills long-forgotten gangsters, criminal organizations, and crusaders whose actions shaped the character of Memphis well into the twentieth century.
The victorious end to the first World War offered hope to African Americans who had fought for freedom abroad and hoped to find it at home. In this new work, historian Mark R. Schneider analyzes the dynamic 1920s that saw the enormous migration of African Americans to Northern urban centers and the formation of important African American religious, social and economic institutions. Yet, even with considerable efforts to promote civil rights and advancements in the arts, many African Americans in the rural south continued to live under conditions unchanged from a century before. African Americans in the Jazz Age recounts the history of this turbulent era, paying particular attention to the ways in which African Americans actively challenged Jim Crow and firmly expressed pride in their heritage. Supplemented by primary sources, this work serves as an ideal introduction to this critical period in U.S. history and allows students to examine the issues first-hand and draw their own conclusions.
Nearly 50 years after his death, Louis Armstrong remains one of the 20th century's most iconic figures. Popular fans still appreciate his later hits such as "Hello, Dolly!" and "What a Wonderful World," while in the jazz community, he remains venerated for his groundbreaking innovations in the 1920s. The achievements of Armstrong's middle years, however, possess some of the trumpeter's most scintillating and career-defining stories. But the story of this crucial time has never been told in depth until now. Between 1929 and 1947, Armstrong transformed himself from a little-known trumpeter in Chicago to an internationally renowned pop star, setting in motion the innovations of the Swing Era and Bebop. He had a similar effect on the art of American pop singing, waxing some of his most identifiable hits such as "Jeepers Creepers" and "When You're Smiling." However as author Ricky Riccardi shows, this transformative era wasn't without its problems, from racist performance reviews and being held up at gunpoint by gangsters to struggling with an overworked embouchure and getting arrested for marijuana possession. Utilizing a prodigious amount of new research, Riccardi traces Armstrong's mid-career fall from grace and dramatic resurgence. Featuring never-before-published photographs and stories culled from Armstrong's personal archives, Heart Full of Rhythm tells the story of how the man called "Pops" became the first "King of Pop."
Gordon's critically acclaimed and richly entertaining exploration of the birthplace of rock and roll is peopled with Delta bluesmen, manic deejays, matinee cowboys and Elvis.
Jazz Music flourished between 1920 and 1930 - the Roaring Twenties, becoming the most acceptable form of popular music, so much so that the decade was named the Jazz Age. But what does the word jazz mean and where did it come from? In his latest work Jazz and the Jazz Age jazz historian Daniel Hardie traces the beginnings of jazz from roots in New Orleans to its appearance in Chicago in 1915 to its domination of popular music in the 1920’s and the wild extravagance of prohibition era Chicago and beyond.
This illustrated encyclopedia offers in-depth coverage of one of the most fascinating and widely studied periods in American history. Extending from the end of World War I in 1918 to the great Wall Street crash in 1929, the Jazz age was a time of frenetic energy and unprecedented historical developments, ranging from the League of Nations, woman suffrage, Prohibition, the Red Scare, the Ku Klux Klan, the Lindberg flight, and the Scopes trial, to the rise of organized crime, motion pictures, and celebrity culture."Encyclopedia of the Jazz Age" provides information on the politics, economics, society, and culture of the era in rich detail. The entries cover themes, personalities, institutions, ideas, events, trends, and more; and special features such as sidebars and photos help bring the era vividly to life.
In the early 1920s, when the New York Yankees' first dynasty was taking shape, they were outplayed by their local rival, the New York Giants. Led by manager John McGraw the Giants won four consecutive National League pennants and two World Series, both against the rival Yankees. Remarkably, the Giants succeeded despite a dysfunctional and unmanageable front office. And at the center of the turmoil was one of baseball's more improbable figures: club president Charles A. Stoneham, who had purchased the Giants for $1 million in 1919, the largest amount ever paid for an American sports team. Short, stout, and jowly, Charlie Stoneham embodied a Jazz Age stereotype--a business and sporting man by day, he led another life by night. He threw lavish parties, lived extravagantly, and was often chronicled in the city tabloids. Little is known about how he came to be one of the most successful investment brokers in what were known as "bucket shops," a highly speculative and controversial branch of Wall Street. One thing about Stoneham is clear, however: at the close of World War I he was a wealthy man, with a net worth of more than $10 million. This wealth made it possible for him to purchase majority control of the Giants, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Stoneham, an owner of racehorses, a friend to local politicians and Tammany Hall, a socialite and a man well placed in New York business and political circles, was also implicated in a number of business scandals and criminal activities. The Giants' principal owner had to contend with federal indictments, civil lawsuits, hostile fellow magnates, and troubles with booze, gambling, and women. But during his sixteen-year tenure as club president, the Giants achieved more success than the club had seen under any prior regime. In Jazz Age Giant Robert Garratt brings to life Stoneham's defining years leading the Giants in the Roaring Twenties. With its layers of mystery and notoriety, Stoneham's life epitomizes the high life and the changing mores of American culture during the 1920s, and the importance of sport, especially baseball, during the pivotal decade.
