"By 1900, TIN-PAN ALLEY took over and ragtime became the coast-to-coast craze, along with a dance called the 'cake-walk,' circling the globe and taking London and Paris by storm. Meanwhile, the success of ragtime and its diluted and derivative forms was overwhelming. It became a featured part of latter-day MINSTRELSY, vaudeville, cabaret, and cafe. Ragtime developed a wider and more influential fusion of European and African musical elements than ever before."
"At the time, minstrelsy and VAUDEVILLE were the modern day equivalent of radio or television networks spreading this new, uniquely American music and dance around the world."
The Story of Jazz, Marshall Stearns, Oxford University Press, 1956.
1917-1926 JAZZ AGE
"During the 'twenties, the channels through which jazz, near-jazz, and non-jazz-called-jazz reached the public multiplied rapidly. The phonograph, the radio, and talking pictures came into their own. A world war, Prohibition, and the boom before the bust of the Depression shaped and hastened the process.
Jazz spread in many directions, on various levels, and at different speeds. No one man---even among musicians---heard it all. Almost everything depended upon who you were, where you were, and when you happened to be listening. For an incredibly important and complicated musical revolution was taking place---something of a cultural clambake."
The Story of Jazz, Marshall Stearns, Oxford University Press, 1956.
1935-1945 SWING ERA
"During the decade of 1935 to 1945, a period known as the 'Swing Era,' the greatest mass conversion in the history of jazz took place. For swing music was sold as a new kind of music--from coast to coast., with all the high-pressure tactics of modern publicity. It was brought to the attention of the public in the press and at the movies, on the stage and in the ballroom, on the juke-box, and over the radio. And it made converts for whom new words such as 'jitterbugs' and 'bobby-soxers' were coined. And again, because most of them were young and liked to dance, swing music lasted quite a while."
The Story of Jazz, Marshall Stearns, Oxford University Press, 1956.
NOLA Jitterbugs' Dance School is a project of NOLA Jitterbugs Initiative, Inc.
Classes are held in the private upstairs room of the Maison, 508 Frenchmen Street, New Orleans, LA 70116.