The Jazz Age: Popular Music in the 1920s - Hardcover

`Arnold Shaw has produced an interesting history of the music of the twenties, relating it tsrongly to the social and political influences of the decade. Agreably anecdotal, the whole making up a rich kaleidoscope which will be of use to researchers as well as to the general readerstage and television-november 1988

'Shaw's research also yields an attractive breadth of biography and social history. He sketches all sorts of luminaries of the time, producing a rich harvest of anecdote along the way.' Country Life

'Arnold Shaw has written an authoritative, exuberant, encyclopaedic book ... Shaw's knowledge ... apppears infinite. Panoramic in scope, exhaustive in detail and affectionate in tone, The Jazz Age will be pored over by those who are enraptured by the period.' David Dale, The Times

'this book is so full of inside information on the era it's almost unbelievable ... a lively informative book which will be a joy to many ... Fine detail and an engaging style ... a great read.' Bernie Ralphs, Beat Scene

It all happened in America in the 1920s: blues, jazz, band music, torch ballads, operettas, and musicals. Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Duke Ellington, Kern, Gershwin, Berlin, and Porter, all burst on to the musical scene in this decade. Harlem celebrated its own artistic and musical renaissance, while the world of prohibition, extravagant parties, and speakeasies produced timeless tunes such as 'Stardust' and 'Tea for Two'. Christened by F. Scott Fitzgerald and declared 'open' by Louis Armstrong, the Jazz Age saw the flowering of the most prolific musical talents of this century.

Arnold Shaw's lively account embraces all the major personalities from instrumentalists to composers, and from singers to lyricists.

The book includes a bibliography, a detailed discography, and lists of songs and films from the 1920s.