Stomp and Swerve: American Music Gets Hot, 1843-1924

The early decades of American popular music—Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, John Philip Sousa, Enrico Caruso—are, for most listeners, the dark ages. It wasn’t until the mid-1920s that the full spectrum of this music—black and white, urban and rural, sophisticated and crude—made it onto records for all to hear. This book brings a forgotten music, hot music, to life by describing how it became the dominant American music—how it outlasted sentimental waltzes and parlor ballads, symphonic marches...