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| The medium of the moment. |
This post kicks off the exploration of bands and artists from the 1930s, which will extend over the next 21(?) posts in this series. Before digging the selected artist, I wanted to provide a little context for the decade to help put people in the mood for the music.
The 1920s ended with a literal crash, of course, when an overheated, over-leveraged stock market imploded in October 1929. The rot went deeper - farms had been struggling through the 1920s - and soon seeped into every corner of the economy, leading to insolvent banks and the collapse of the consumer economy. Decades of over-farming/grazing in habitats that couldn’t handle it (America’s Great Plains) created the infamous Dust Bowl (it was no spontaneous event), which expanded the misery still further and sent people scrambling to the cities and the coasts in search of work. A popular statistic notes that 25% of Americans couldn’t find work in the depths of the Great Depression, something that points to the long-standing, glass-half-empty that most people (myself flaming included) talk about the news - i.e., that means 75% of the country could. Belts tightened, but the world still turned, basically, as demonstrated by the series of details I mined out of a 1930s timeline.
1930 saw the invention of the analog computer by Vannevar Bush and Clarence Birdseye patented the quick-freezing process that made frozen food possible; the Empire State Building opened for business in 1931 and Congress and President Herbert Hoover made the “Star-Spangled Banner” America’s national anthem the same year; voters swapped Hoover for Franklin Delano Roosevelt the following year and Bruno Hauptmann kidnapped the son of (Nazi afficionado) Charles Lindbergh; the New Deal launched during FDR’s first 100 days in early 1933, which he promoted over the then-common radio with his famous Fireside Chats, and the country collectively decided it needed a damn drink and repealed Prohibition; the Securities and Exchange Commission launched in 1934, along with the Master’s Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club (dude who won it hit only four under par); Social Security started the next year, but wouldn’t pay out benefits until two years later, and Porgy & Bess (“the first distinctly American opera") opened, but Babe Ruth’s career ended; in 1936, a strong majority of Americans handed FDR a second term (he won 62% of the vote) and Jesse Owens took four giant, salutary shits on Hitler’s “master-race” delusion at the Berlin Olympics (one for each gold medal); San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, first to pedestrians, then to cars; a National Minimum Wage was set at $0.25 in 1938 and Orson Welles broadcast his radio drama, War of the Worlds; and, finally, the United States held not one but two big, optimistic World’s Fairs in 1939, one in Queens, New York, the other, San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition: a lot of shit happened, and that’s just about a quarter of it.
Popular culture did what it could to soothe all the trouble and uncertainty by putting on a happy face. For instance:
“Hollywood responded to the economic anxiety that dominated the lives of Americans during the Depression by producing films that maintained a self-conscious optimism.”
The 1920s ended with a literal crash, of course, when an overheated, over-leveraged stock market imploded in October 1929. The rot went deeper - farms had been struggling through the 1920s - and soon seeped into every corner of the economy, leading to insolvent banks and the collapse of the consumer economy. Decades of over-farming/grazing in habitats that couldn’t handle it (America’s Great Plains) created the infamous Dust Bowl (it was no spontaneous event), which expanded the misery still further and sent people scrambling to the cities and the coasts in search of work. A popular statistic notes that 25% of Americans couldn’t find work in the depths of the Great Depression, something that points to the long-standing, glass-half-empty that most people (myself flaming included) talk about the news - i.e., that means 75% of the country could. Belts tightened, but the world still turned, basically, as demonstrated by the series of details I mined out of a 1930s timeline.
1930 saw the invention of the analog computer by Vannevar Bush and Clarence Birdseye patented the quick-freezing process that made frozen food possible; the Empire State Building opened for business in 1931 and Congress and President Herbert Hoover made the “Star-Spangled Banner” America’s national anthem the same year; voters swapped Hoover for Franklin Delano Roosevelt the following year and Bruno Hauptmann kidnapped the son of (Nazi afficionado) Charles Lindbergh; the New Deal launched during FDR’s first 100 days in early 1933, which he promoted over the then-common radio with his famous Fireside Chats, and the country collectively decided it needed a damn drink and repealed Prohibition; the Securities and Exchange Commission launched in 1934, along with the Master’s Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club (dude who won it hit only four under par); Social Security started the next year, but wouldn’t pay out benefits until two years later, and Porgy & Bess (“the first distinctly American opera") opened, but Babe Ruth’s career ended; in 1936, a strong majority of Americans handed FDR a second term (he won 62% of the vote) and Jesse Owens took four giant, salutary shits on Hitler’s “master-race” delusion at the Berlin Olympics (one for each gold medal); San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937, first to pedestrians, then to cars; a National Minimum Wage was set at $0.25 in 1938 and Orson Welles broadcast his radio drama, War of the Worlds; and, finally, the United States held not one but two big, optimistic World’s Fairs in 1939, one in Queens, New York, the other, San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition: a lot of shit happened, and that’s just about a quarter of it.
Popular culture did what it could to soothe all the trouble and uncertainty by putting on a happy face. For instance:
“Hollywood responded to the economic anxiety that dominated the lives of Americans during the Depression by producing films that maintained a self-conscious optimism.”
