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HTY/POL 301 Career Prep and HTY 339: Historiographical Essays and HTY 499/POL 499 Senior Seminar: Jazz Music 1920s
Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion charts a path through American music and musical life using as guides the words of composers, performers, writers and the rest of us ordinary folks who sing, dance, and listen. The anthology of primary sources contains about 160 selections from 1540 to 2000. Sometimes the sources are classics in the literature around American music, for example, the Preface to the Bay Psalm Book, excerpts from Slave Songs of the United States, and Charles Ives extolling Emerson. But many other selections offer uncommon sources, including a satirical story about a Yankee music teacher; various columns from 19th-century German American newspapers; the memoirs of a 19th-century diva; Lottie Joplin remembering her husband Scott; a little-known reflection of Copland about Stravinsky; an interview with Muddy Waters from the Chicago Defender; a letter from Woody Guthrie on the spunkfire attitude of a folk song; a press release from the Country Music Association; and the Congressional testimony around Napster. Sidebar entries occasionally bring a topic or an idea into the present, acknowledging the extent to which revivals of many kinds of music play a role in American contemporary culture. This book focuses on the connections between theory and practice to enrich our understanding of the diversity of American musical experiences. Designed especially to accompany college courses which survey American music as a whole, the book is also relevant to courses in American history and American Studies.
Articles
“Everybody Step”: Irving Berlin, Jazz, and Broadway in the 1920s
Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux write with intellectual bite, eloquence, and the passion of unabashed fans. They explain what jazz is, where it came from, how it works, and who created it, all within the broader context of American life and culture.
This history of jazz, spanning the twentieth century, is the first to place it within the broad context of American culture. Burton Peretti argues persuasively that this distinctive American music has been a key thread in the tapestry of the nation s culture. The music itself, its players and its audience, and the critical debates it has prompted, tell us much about changes in American life since 1910. Mr. Peretti traces the emergence of jazz out of ragtime during a time of tumultuous growth of cites and industries. In the 1920s jazz flourished and symbolized the cultural struggle between modernists and traditionalists. As American sought reassurance and self-esteem during the Great Depression, jazz reached new levels of sophistication in the Swing Era. World War II encouraged rapid changes in popular tastes, and in the postwar decades jazz became both a voice of a globally dominant America and an avant-garde music reflecting social and political turmoil. Today, Mr. Peretti concludes, jazz symbolizes important cultural trends and enjoys a new prestige in a complex musical scene. Jazz in American Culture tells a peculiarly American story, evaluating the music as well as those who created it, and opening new perspectives on our cultural history."
Here's the definitive one-volume resource on everything jazz and blues! From their roots in African culture to their expression in the music of the twentieth century, the history of jazz and blues reveals how this truly American music came to be part of the soundtrack of contemporary urban life. Comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible, The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues is organized chronologically by decade. Each section gives a historical overview plus an A to Z of influential artists and their key recordings. Readers will learn how jazz and blues have changed over the past century-and then use dedicated Web links to hear those changes. With history, artist biographies, and illustrative mp3s, this book is one-stop shopping for a great overview of two important musical forms.
Jazz by 
Jazz in American Culture by 
The Billboard Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues by 