What do you think?
Rate this book
Popular Music of the Twenties
The 1920s was an exciting time for popular music. The pioneer days of the gramophone were over and electrical recording precipitated the age of hi-fi. The talking, singing picture arrived, and most important, the 1920s saw the introduction of radio. To start with, radio was just a fad but it soon proved to be the most epoch-making invention of the age.
Music hall went into decline but the musical prospered For the first time the publis was beginning to be given what it wanted, not what it was thought it should have.
Music hall went into decline but the musical prospered For the first time the publis was beginning to be given what it wanted, not what it was thought it should have.
176 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1976
About the author
Ronald Pearsall
69 books3 followersRonald Joseph Pearsall was an English writer of books on wide range of subjects.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 4, 2013
This irritating superficial hop skip and jump over the music of the (British) 1920s contains some nice illustrations and also some breathtaking casual racism - an unattributed quote on page 70 describes Duke Ellington's band as
a coloured unit in which the expected faults of coon bands - a noticeable crudeness and somewhat poor tone - are by no means so apparent as usual
and this quoted on p 92, from an article by Constant Lambert, British composer :
the fact that at least ninety percent of jazz tunes are written by Jews undoubtedly goes far to account for the curiously sagging quality - so typical of Jewish art - the almost masochistic melancholy of the average foxtrot
Ronald Pearsall, in criticising this guy, ends up sounding equally tasteless:
Lambert represented a mentality that waged war on Tin Pan Alley for providing an article that was indescribably awful, and accused it of being a commercialised Wailing Wall.
We may note that Constant Lambert was the father of Kit Lambert who famously managed The Who. Probably also tasteless of me to mention that Lamberts senior and junior both died before they got old.
a coloured unit in which the expected faults of coon bands - a noticeable crudeness and somewhat poor tone - are by no means so apparent as usual
and this quoted on p 92, from an article by Constant Lambert, British composer :
the fact that at least ninety percent of jazz tunes are written by Jews undoubtedly goes far to account for the curiously sagging quality - so typical of Jewish art - the almost masochistic melancholy of the average foxtrot
Ronald Pearsall, in criticising this guy, ends up sounding equally tasteless:
Lambert represented a mentality that waged war on Tin Pan Alley for providing an article that was indescribably awful, and accused it of being a commercialised Wailing Wall.
We may note that Constant Lambert was the father of Kit Lambert who famously managed The Who. Probably also tasteless of me to mention that Lamberts senior and junior both died before they got old.
Displaying 1 of 1 review