Some Nation writers went out of their way to avoid discussing race in their critiques of the new music, even as loaded ...

Postmodern Jukebox teamed up with singer Veronica Swift to perform a bouncy 1920s hot jazz cover of the 1987 Aerosmith song “Rag Doll”. As she sang, Swift’s fabulous swingy dress kept time ...

The Delta blues, first recorded in the 1920s, was one of the earliest types of blues music and originated in Mississippi in the Delta. The Delta was particularly poverty stricken and the ...

The Scopes trial was a signature event of the Jazz Age. It had that "ballyhoo" spirit so typical of the 1920s. In one way ... "We now have music by machines, we travel by machines — soon ...

Black Americans developed jazz at the turn of the century. The improvised music combined elements of ragtime, blues, spirituals, and band music. By the 1920s, jazz had migrated across the border ...

To learn more about jazz and its impact, watch The Devil's Music: 1920s Jazz, the final film in the 4-part Culture Shock series.

The chapter “Our Mainstream Jazz” describes how, by 1970, jazz gained a modernist, formalized sensibility after the influence ...

Percussion prodigy and washboard wizard Jimmy Bertrand worked with Louis Armstrong and Ma Rainey and mentored future star ...

In 1924 jazz and blues burst into the world of the classical orchestra thanks to trailblazer George Gershwin, who composed music full of the energy and playfulness of New York City in the 1920s.