The Roaring Twenties: The Cultural Phenomenon.

The Roaring Twenties is characterized by the decade's distinctive cultural edge, which features the jazz age. It was a time of blues and ragtime, jazz and swing. Music was to be heard near and far, high and low - whether you were in living room parlors, dance halls, or in one of the numerous smoky speakeasies. Jazz and swing were to be found everywhere. Music and dance dominated the social scenes, and so did those who made the music so infamous: the singers and musicians. Ruling the "billboards," so to speak, were the likes of:

• Fats Waller*
• Fletcher Henderson and The Dixie Stompers*
• Duke Ellington
• Bessie Smith
• Joesphine Baker
• Paul Whiteman*
• Louis Armstrong*
• Fats Waller *

        

 

All-girl Orchestras now existed and traveled the roads, 100s of dance bands called "territory bands" journeyed and criss-crossed the country between St. Louis and Denver, Texas and Nebraska, playing one-nighters.  Jazz was everywhere. While live music was on the rise, Americans bought millions of radios and phonograph records, bringing music into the home and jazz to remote locations where most bands could not reach.  For some, where ragtime already seemed bad enough, Jazz seemed even worse, threatening small-town America and "loosening" morals. Regardless if you were among the many who were infected by the jazz bug or strayed away from it, there's no denying that it made it's way around the country and impacted it so as to where an entire decade was to be coined and forever known as "The Roaring Twenties."

*My Personal Favorites for which
 I've provided videos instead of pictures