Music history of the United States (1900–1940)
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Music in the United States underwent many shifts and developments from 1900 to 1940. The country survived both World War I and the Great Depression before entering World War II in December 1941. Americans endured great loss and hardship but found hope and encouragement in music. The genres and styles present during this period were Native American music, blues and gospel, jazz, swing, Cajun and Creole music, and country. The United States also took inspiration from other cultures and parts of the world for her own music. The music of each region differed as much as the people did. The time also produced many notable singers and musicians, including jazz figure Louis Armstrong, blues and jazz singer Mamie Smith, and country singer Jimmie Rodgers.
Native Americans
Modern
.Jazz, blues, folk, country, and gospel, music from the
Eastern European Jews contributed klezmer music to American culture, with the earliest stars including Harry Kandel, Naftule Brandwein, Dave Tarras and Abe Schwartz. Kandel, a clarinetist, set the stage for American klezmer.
Blues and gospel
The blues began in rural communities, primarily in the south. During the 1920s, classic female blues singers like Mamie Smith ("Crazy Blues") dominated the genre's sound. For most white Americans, these female singers were their first exposure to black music, or "race music" as it was then known. In the 1930s, local blues styles developed in Memphis, New Orleans, the mid-Atlantic coast, Texas, Kansas City and, most importantly, Chicago. A style of piano-playing based on the blues, boogie-woogie was briefly popular among mainstream audiences and blues listeners.
At the heights of the Great Depression, gospel music started to become popular by people like Thomas A. Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson, who adapted Christian hymns to blues and jazz structures. By 1925, three main styles of gospel had become popular among mainstream audiences. Itinerant jack leg preachers like Blind Willie Johnson and Washington Phillips released recordings that are now collector's items but were then only marginally popular. Jubilee quartets like the Norfolk Jubilee Quartet and the Golden Gate Quartet were popular and sophisticated, but the most successful form of gospel was singing preachers like Reverend J. M. Gates, who passionately sung about the terrible consequences of disobeying God's laws.
Jazz
Jazz was more urban than the blues. Relying more on instrumentation, the sound was well-suited for listeners unfamiliar with the genre's conventions. It drew primarily on New Orleans blues, but also incorporated influences from Jewish-American musicians and composers like Benny Goodman and George Gershwin. In the 1920s, jazz bars became popular among white Americans, particularly young ones. As with ragtime before, and most major genres since, jazz was blamed for the moral degeneracy of the youth that visited these bars and listened to the music. In spite of the controversy, jazz emerged as the dominant sound of the country in the late 1920s in popularized forms that some called watered down, like swing music and big band. Though these, like jazz proper, were blamed for crime and delinquency, they had become mainstream by the 1930s. In the 1940s, pure jazz began to become more popular, along with the blues, with artists like Ella Fitzgerald ("A-Tisket, A-Tasket") and Billie Holiday ("Strange Fruit") becoming nationally successful.
In 1917, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band released "
Alongside the
The mid-1930s were the peak of big band swing, with artists like Charlie Barnet, Chick Webb and Benny Goodman rising to the ranks of esteemed-band leaders. Soloists appeared during this period, inspiring hysterical reactions among fans.
Swing
Swing was a pop-oriented form of jazz, the origins of which can be found as far back as 1923, when Fletcher Henderson began enlarging jazz bands. Whole new sections were added, and Henderson created music of greater range and texture. The same period saw
.Cajun and Creole music
Modern Cajun music began developing in the 1920s, drawing on traditional fiddlers and more modern accordionists.
In the 1930s, oil was discovered in Louisiana and Anglos came to the state en masse. Cajun culture was denigrated and restricted, and old-time music and western swing became major influences on Cajun music. Luderin Darbone's The Hackleberry Ramblers and Harry Choates were the vanguard of this new wave of Cajun music, which incorporated English lyrics and a smooth style. By the 1940s, though a revival of traditional Cajun music had begun, led by Iry LeJeune, whose 1948 "La valse du pont d'amour" is considered a watershed in the field.
Country music
At the beginning of the century, rural whites from
Hillbilly music was not widely recorded until the 1920s.
By the 1940s, brother duets, in which two brothers sang harmony with precision and clarity, had become popular and was known as