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| Apt overall. You'll see... |
I’ve felt a certain ignorance about the history of American popular music for years, where and with whom the sounds originated, and, no less important, where the currents carried from there. After putting off the inevitable for too long, I started this project to fill in the blanks, first one decade at a time and then, when I hit the sounds and decades I’m familiar with, maybe the time-line compresses to five year cycles, maybe it starts going one artist at a time. That decision will come when the timeline forces it - which I expect will come at a painfully obvious crossroads, say the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.
That’s about 35 years in the future from where this timeline starts - the 1920s. A little historical grounding feels appropriate, something to put the reader in, for lack of a better word, the mood.
Popular culture recalls the 1920s as a happy, carefree time; going the other way, it started with a raging pandemic and the memory of a savage war (aka, the War to End All Wars) and ended with the first, baffling year of Great Depression, which, together, go some way to explaining the hunger to freedom and diversion. It was also a whole damn decade of Prohibition, a time when Americans tried to shelve the sauce, but the take-home lesson from the experiment was that they were (and remain) incurable lushes. Anyone who wanted to find a drink didn’t have to look that hard and for the simplest reason of all: supply follows demand, laws be damned. (Ask anyone who lived through the “just say no” era how little effort it took to find pot - or any drug for that matter.)
The 1920s also saw the birth of mass, and crucially, nationwide consumer culture. Regular people had excess money to spend - and spend they did on all kinds of useful/fun crap, e.g., ready-made clothing, surprisingly affordable cars (as low as $260), modern conveniences for the home like washing machines (which produced idle hands), early birth control (e.g., the diaphragm), going to the movies (just stumbled on an estimate that 3/4 of Americans went to the movies once a week), radios, speakeasies, just going out dancing, generally…and now we’re getting closer to the subject.
The freedom to move around the country meant people actually did it, of course, Black Americans among them - a lot of, in fact, hence the phrase for the phenomenon, The Great Migration. They carried two musical styles to the cities in the North, Midwest and West: jazz and blues. Jazz, in particular, hadn’t evolved far beyond its roots by the 1920s and, as such, it doesn’t match what most 21st-century Americans think when they hear the word “jazz,” but both genres, and the people who played them, scared the holy shit out of the white, Protestant mainstream and that lead to the same kind of semi-shapeless, hydra-headed reactionary backlash among that large sub-set of Americans.
Prohibition was the most polite and veiled part of it, but uglier cousins like the Ku Klux Klan, the evangelical fever sweats of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial and strict, targeted restrictions on immigration joined in to clarify the main motivations behind all the noise. Of all of those, only the immigration restrictions served their intended purpose: Klan membership boomed during the 20s - in Illinois (home to Chicago) and Indiana (neighbor to Chicago?), in particular - only to plummet to 30,000 members nation-wide by 1930; the Scopes Trial made literalist interpretations of the Bible a punchline for a generation; and, as noted above, the ease with which millions skirted around Prohibition doomed a project that started as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution - one hell of a statement on how quickly and thoroughly support for the program dried up.
The same thing happened with jazz and the blues - and, blossoming in the same decade, country music. Once radio, the phonograph - aided by electronic recording taking over from acoustic recording - and popular venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club (both in New York) and the Aragon (Chicago) gave people a chance to vote with their money and attendance. Thus those three forms dominated the decade - jazz and blues as mass culture, and country as…kind of its own half-reactionary thing. Those same styles seeped into popular culture at large - Broadway shows and then film - which, again, further deepened the bond with the mass American culture that mobility and radio made truly national, from sea to shining sea.
And…fast and sloppy as that is, that’s about as much contextualizing and outlining as I want to do for how Americans connected with new music in the 1920s. The plan from here is to focus on specific musical milestones from the 1920s - most of which I found on a Wikipedia page. Without lingering too long on any one thing or person, and name-dropping as much as I can, here goes…
Mamie Smith became the first Black woman to make the first-ever blues recording with "Crazy Blues" and Pittsburgh’s KDKA became the first radio station in America with a reliable broadcast schedule; 500 stations existed, and all over the country, just three years later….oh, and the label that recorded Mamie Smith seems significant…
Speaking of record labels, Harry Pace and W. C. Handy, aka, a claimant to the label “Father of the Blues,” established the first black-owned record label in America in 1921 - and it would take depressingly little time for their phrase “race music” to take hold (and one guess as to what that means). Some of the first, famous “big bands” of the 1920s got started the same year, including Vince Lopez (“Cheerful Little Earful” and "Society Tempo") and Bennie Moten (the tres-20s "Moten Stomp" and "Kansas City Shuffle"), out in Kansas City. Some other musical firsts: Trixie Smith’s “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)” became the first song to put “rock” and “roll” that close together in 1922, Clay Custer’s “The Rocks” featured the first known recording of a boogie piano line back in 1923, and, back to 1922, Eck Robertson and Henry Gilld recorded the first widely-popular country song, a tune called “Sallie Gooden” (which will sound like just plain fiddle music to many). Bigger and better, some of the biggest names of the decade got their first bite of fame during the ‘20s - e.g., Jelly Roll Morton recorded his first in 1923, national audiences heard Louis Armstrong when he joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in 1924 - which orchestra started only the year prior - and Bix Biederbecke organized the Wolverine Orchestra. ’24 was full, people…
To close out the decade, the entire country genre laid down the roots that would carry it to the edge of today, e.g., the launch of the National Barn Dance in 1924, a radio show that lasted until 1970; the Grand Ole Opry came along by 1927. Perhaps more significantly, a record executive at the label not-yet-named, Ralph Peer, let slip that people could get royalties out of “white rural,” aka, country music, which word inspired OG country legends like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family to seek fame and fortune through music (the Carters, apparently, were hard-headed on the business side). Same region, different sound, after singers like Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith dominated the first half of the ‘20s, male blues artists took over in the second half - a notable number of them blind, as it happens - e.g., Blind Willie Johnson, personal, early favorite Blind Willie McTell, and, the decade’s heavy-hitter for the blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Finally, in a moment and a song that seemed to bring together every strand of American sound, culture and technology, George Gershwin recorded “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1924. On a personal note, that song stirs something powerful in me that I know, but can’t put into words; an incredible piece of music, but it also bears noting that that style/approach to music failed to remain popular.
Now, about that label, Okeh Records put out a surprising number of the 1920s biggest acts - i.e., they were decidedly present at the dawning of three defining American genres. The Mamie Smith recordings, alluded to above, was a big one, obviously, but Ralph Peer worked at Okeh, which means they first recorded Jimmie Rodgers and the legendary Carter Family on wax; Peer also recorded another country pioneer named Fiddlin’ John Carson some years prior. As the saying goes, wait, there’s more: Okeh also released music by Bix Biederbecke, Bennie Moten and Louis Armstrong - specifically, Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven collections in the late 1920s, which I’ll be elaborating on when the cycle gets around to it, more on that later…
To wrap up Okeh Records, all that fit founder Otto K. E. Heineman’s ethos (per Wikipedia) of “[providing] music for audiences neglected by the larger record companies,” also, a glance at Heineman’s name should give you where “Okeh” got its name. For all the richly-deserved shit it gets, demonstrating the size of the market for “race records” - which, in case it’s not clear, is a phrase the Okeh label coined (it’s all impact, people) - was something capitalism did well: it revealed what most people would actually pay to hear.
Okeh Records died in 1932 - along with most of the phonograph market, it bears pointing out; once people lost their disposable income, things like records fall off the list of necessities somewhere near the first wave - but that only makes it a smart way to end this introduction to the 1920s. The decade opened up all kinds of new horizons for tens of millions of Americans; and yet, what the 1920s giveth, the 1930s taketh away, and with interest. A couple decades and a lot of hardship had to pass before Americans would consume that freely and indiscriminately - a term intended broadly here.
That’s the crash-course history. Apart from figuring the 10 songs embed below, that’s it for this post. From here, this little cycle on the music of the 1920s will continue with separate posts on sometwelve twenty-two key artists from the decade - who I’ve selected through a process several miles short of scientific. I’m still waffling on a couple, but I’ve got most of the twelve nailed down - and I’m pretty committed to the 12-artist/band limit, because otherwise I’ll never get to the goddamn 1930s, never mind beyond that. I’ve already mentioned most of them above…and I’ll slim down the list a little more by promising that I will not write separate posts on 10 bands/artists below - several of them with regrets, because they did shape the narrative.
At any rate, here are 10 songs from the 1920s that I count as good places to begin if you want to learn more about music from the era. For those who do that kind of thing…oh, and I cheated about because I snuck in a few songs above too. Digging in…
Isham Jones - “It Had to Be You”
Partially chosen for the song - which I think* most people know - but Jones is a name that comes up and, based on the four, five songs I’ve heard by him, he translates easier than most.
[* Ed. - I don’t really know how “normal” my music diet has been, but I’ve had a couple big band periods, and I’m over-familiar with 1940s/1950s/60s “popular” music - by which I mean the square shit playing catch-up during that time. If that’s normal, well, all right. If not…eh. Consider this a chance to hear it either again, or for the first time.]
Vernon Dalhart - “The Prisoner’s Song”
One of the biggest country singles of the 1920s - and it’s pretty damn good, or at least it’s growing on me. I fill in blanks every time I hear it, for one. Dalhart and this song have shown up on every sampler of 20s music I’ve found so far.
Gene Austin - “Bye Bye Blackbird”
A very smooth listen, which isn’t surprising because he comes from the “pop” side of popular music. A big name from the 20s that I wrestled mightily with including.
Ben Bernie - “Sweet Georgia Brown”
The Harlem Globetrotters song, but with a different swing to it.
Eddie Cantor - “Makin’ Whoopee”
Cantor is like Austin - popular, polished - only I couldn’t tell you who was more popular between them. Another song I think most people no, but also one I’d encourage anyone to listen to over and over and over again.
Pinetop Smith - “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” [Ed. - Pinetop Smith wound up with a chapter.]
I’ve heard at least three songs that clearly borrow from this (even if I can only remember one of them right now). This song…just kicks ass. It’s the sound of having a good time, no matter how dated. You can hear the party in it.
Marion Harris - “I Ain’t Got Nobody”
Another heavy-hitter from the decade I feel a little silly about passing over (again, I have to reach the 1930s), but I’m mainly sharing it for the song. This one had whiskers by the time David Lee Roth got to it…
Sophie Tucker - “Some of These Days”
Like the Dalhart tune, this one shows up in every 20s songs lists. Based on what little I know, Tucker feels like the most important artist I passed on. You hear the tone and character of this song in just about everything from the 20s. The sound, and Tucker’s voice, borders on iconic.
Helen Kane - “I Wanna Be Loved by You”
Betty Boop’s most famous bit, by the original artist.
Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra, “King Porter Stomp”
A very jazz-forward sound - as in, this was one of the songs furthest from the ragtime/blues roots. Fletcher Henderson’s another biggie from the decade - and not just because he launched Louis Armstrong. Also, this was just a good song - one that holds up for modern ears, even.
And…fin.
That’s about 35 years in the future from where this timeline starts - the 1920s. A little historical grounding feels appropriate, something to put the reader in, for lack of a better word, the mood.
Popular culture recalls the 1920s as a happy, carefree time; going the other way, it started with a raging pandemic and the memory of a savage war (aka, the War to End All Wars) and ended with the first, baffling year of Great Depression, which, together, go some way to explaining the hunger to freedom and diversion. It was also a whole damn decade of Prohibition, a time when Americans tried to shelve the sauce, but the take-home lesson from the experiment was that they were (and remain) incurable lushes. Anyone who wanted to find a drink didn’t have to look that hard and for the simplest reason of all: supply follows demand, laws be damned. (Ask anyone who lived through the “just say no” era how little effort it took to find pot - or any drug for that matter.)
The 1920s also saw the birth of mass, and crucially, nationwide consumer culture. Regular people had excess money to spend - and spend they did on all kinds of useful/fun crap, e.g., ready-made clothing, surprisingly affordable cars (as low as $260), modern conveniences for the home like washing machines (which produced idle hands), early birth control (e.g., the diaphragm), going to the movies (just stumbled on an estimate that 3/4 of Americans went to the movies once a week), radios, speakeasies, just going out dancing, generally…and now we’re getting closer to the subject.
The freedom to move around the country meant people actually did it, of course, Black Americans among them - a lot of, in fact, hence the phrase for the phenomenon, The Great Migration. They carried two musical styles to the cities in the North, Midwest and West: jazz and blues. Jazz, in particular, hadn’t evolved far beyond its roots by the 1920s and, as such, it doesn’t match what most 21st-century Americans think when they hear the word “jazz,” but both genres, and the people who played them, scared the holy shit out of the white, Protestant mainstream and that lead to the same kind of semi-shapeless, hydra-headed reactionary backlash among that large sub-set of Americans.
Prohibition was the most polite and veiled part of it, but uglier cousins like the Ku Klux Klan, the evangelical fever sweats of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial and strict, targeted restrictions on immigration joined in to clarify the main motivations behind all the noise. Of all of those, only the immigration restrictions served their intended purpose: Klan membership boomed during the 20s - in Illinois (home to Chicago) and Indiana (neighbor to Chicago?), in particular - only to plummet to 30,000 members nation-wide by 1930; the Scopes Trial made literalist interpretations of the Bible a punchline for a generation; and, as noted above, the ease with which millions skirted around Prohibition doomed a project that started as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution - one hell of a statement on how quickly and thoroughly support for the program dried up.
The same thing happened with jazz and the blues - and, blossoming in the same decade, country music. Once radio, the phonograph - aided by electronic recording taking over from acoustic recording - and popular venues like the Savoy and the Cotton Club (both in New York) and the Aragon (Chicago) gave people a chance to vote with their money and attendance. Thus those three forms dominated the decade - jazz and blues as mass culture, and country as…kind of its own half-reactionary thing. Those same styles seeped into popular culture at large - Broadway shows and then film - which, again, further deepened the bond with the mass American culture that mobility and radio made truly national, from sea to shining sea.
And…fast and sloppy as that is, that’s about as much contextualizing and outlining as I want to do for how Americans connected with new music in the 1920s. The plan from here is to focus on specific musical milestones from the 1920s - most of which I found on a Wikipedia page. Without lingering too long on any one thing or person, and name-dropping as much as I can, here goes…
Mamie Smith became the first Black woman to make the first-ever blues recording with "Crazy Blues" and Pittsburgh’s KDKA became the first radio station in America with a reliable broadcast schedule; 500 stations existed, and all over the country, just three years later….oh, and the label that recorded Mamie Smith seems significant…
Speaking of record labels, Harry Pace and W. C. Handy, aka, a claimant to the label “Father of the Blues,” established the first black-owned record label in America in 1921 - and it would take depressingly little time for their phrase “race music” to take hold (and one guess as to what that means). Some of the first, famous “big bands” of the 1920s got started the same year, including Vince Lopez (“Cheerful Little Earful” and "Society Tempo") and Bennie Moten (the tres-20s "Moten Stomp" and "Kansas City Shuffle"), out in Kansas City. Some other musical firsts: Trixie Smith’s “My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)” became the first song to put “rock” and “roll” that close together in 1922, Clay Custer’s “The Rocks” featured the first known recording of a boogie piano line back in 1923, and, back to 1922, Eck Robertson and Henry Gilld recorded the first widely-popular country song, a tune called “Sallie Gooden” (which will sound like just plain fiddle music to many). Bigger and better, some of the biggest names of the decade got their first bite of fame during the ‘20s - e.g., Jelly Roll Morton recorded his first in 1923, national audiences heard Louis Armstrong when he joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in 1924 - which orchestra started only the year prior - and Bix Biederbecke organized the Wolverine Orchestra. ’24 was full, people…
To close out the decade, the entire country genre laid down the roots that would carry it to the edge of today, e.g., the launch of the National Barn Dance in 1924, a radio show that lasted until 1970; the Grand Ole Opry came along by 1927. Perhaps more significantly, a record executive at the label not-yet-named, Ralph Peer, let slip that people could get royalties out of “white rural,” aka, country music, which word inspired OG country legends like Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family to seek fame and fortune through music (the Carters, apparently, were hard-headed on the business side). Same region, different sound, after singers like Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith dominated the first half of the ‘20s, male blues artists took over in the second half - a notable number of them blind, as it happens - e.g., Blind Willie Johnson, personal, early favorite Blind Willie McTell, and, the decade’s heavy-hitter for the blues, Blind Lemon Jefferson.
Finally, in a moment and a song that seemed to bring together every strand of American sound, culture and technology, George Gershwin recorded “Rhapsody in Blue” in 1924. On a personal note, that song stirs something powerful in me that I know, but can’t put into words; an incredible piece of music, but it also bears noting that that style/approach to music failed to remain popular.
Now, about that label, Okeh Records put out a surprising number of the 1920s biggest acts - i.e., they were decidedly present at the dawning of three defining American genres. The Mamie Smith recordings, alluded to above, was a big one, obviously, but Ralph Peer worked at Okeh, which means they first recorded Jimmie Rodgers and the legendary Carter Family on wax; Peer also recorded another country pioneer named Fiddlin’ John Carson some years prior. As the saying goes, wait, there’s more: Okeh also released music by Bix Biederbecke, Bennie Moten and Louis Armstrong - specifically, Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven collections in the late 1920s, which I’ll be elaborating on when the cycle gets around to it, more on that later…
To wrap up Okeh Records, all that fit founder Otto K. E. Heineman’s ethos (per Wikipedia) of “[providing] music for audiences neglected by the larger record companies,” also, a glance at Heineman’s name should give you where “Okeh” got its name. For all the richly-deserved shit it gets, demonstrating the size of the market for “race records” - which, in case it’s not clear, is a phrase the Okeh label coined (it’s all impact, people) - was something capitalism did well: it revealed what most people would actually pay to hear.
Okeh Records died in 1932 - along with most of the phonograph market, it bears pointing out; once people lost their disposable income, things like records fall off the list of necessities somewhere near the first wave - but that only makes it a smart way to end this introduction to the 1920s. The decade opened up all kinds of new horizons for tens of millions of Americans; and yet, what the 1920s giveth, the 1930s taketh away, and with interest. A couple decades and a lot of hardship had to pass before Americans would consume that freely and indiscriminately - a term intended broadly here.
That’s the crash-course history. Apart from figuring the 10 songs embed below, that’s it for this post. From here, this little cycle on the music of the 1920s will continue with separate posts on some
At any rate, here are 10 songs from the 1920s that I count as good places to begin if you want to learn more about music from the era. For those who do that kind of thing…oh, and I cheated about because I snuck in a few songs above too. Digging in…
Isham Jones - “It Had to Be You”
Partially chosen for the song - which I think* most people know - but Jones is a name that comes up and, based on the four, five songs I’ve heard by him, he translates easier than most.
[* Ed. - I don’t really know how “normal” my music diet has been, but I’ve had a couple big band periods, and I’m over-familiar with 1940s/1950s/60s “popular” music - by which I mean the square shit playing catch-up during that time. If that’s normal, well, all right. If not…eh. Consider this a chance to hear it either again, or for the first time.]
Vernon Dalhart - “The Prisoner’s Song”
One of the biggest country singles of the 1920s - and it’s pretty damn good, or at least it’s growing on me. I fill in blanks every time I hear it, for one. Dalhart and this song have shown up on every sampler of 20s music I’ve found so far.
Gene Austin - “Bye Bye Blackbird”
A very smooth listen, which isn’t surprising because he comes from the “pop” side of popular music. A big name from the 20s that I wrestled mightily with including.
Ben Bernie - “Sweet Georgia Brown”
The Harlem Globetrotters song, but with a different swing to it.
Eddie Cantor - “Makin’ Whoopee”
Cantor is like Austin - popular, polished - only I couldn’t tell you who was more popular between them. Another song I think most people no, but also one I’d encourage anyone to listen to over and over and over again.
Pinetop Smith - “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” [Ed. - Pinetop Smith wound up with a chapter.]
I’ve heard at least three songs that clearly borrow from this (even if I can only remember one of them right now). This song…just kicks ass. It’s the sound of having a good time, no matter how dated. You can hear the party in it.
Marion Harris - “I Ain’t Got Nobody”
Another heavy-hitter from the decade I feel a little silly about passing over (again, I have to reach the 1930s), but I’m mainly sharing it for the song. This one had whiskers by the time David Lee Roth got to it…
Sophie Tucker - “Some of These Days”
Like the Dalhart tune, this one shows up in every 20s songs lists. Based on what little I know, Tucker feels like the most important artist I passed on. You hear the tone and character of this song in just about everything from the 20s. The sound, and Tucker’s voice, borders on iconic.
Helen Kane - “I Wanna Be Loved by You”
Betty Boop’s most famous bit, by the original artist.
Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra, “King Porter Stomp”
A very jazz-forward sound - as in, this was one of the songs furthest from the ragtime/blues roots. Fletcher Henderson’s another biggie from the decade - and not just because he launched Louis Armstrong. Also, this was just a good song - one that holds up for modern ears, even.
And…fin.
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