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MUSIC

The year 1929 began with a sense of optimism that was reflected in the popular song "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen. Soon, however, other songs reflected a grim reality. In 1931 Jay Gorney and E. Y. "Yip" Harburg wrote a song called "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?," which came to symbolize the hopelessness and indignity many Americans felt in the face of unemployment and severe economic hardship. After President Franklin Roosevelt's morale boosting pronouncement, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" became popular. This was ironic inasmuch as the song was from the cartoon The Three Little Pigs (1933), produced by the arch conservative Walt Disney. Not long thereafter, prohibition was repealed, giving rise to a culture of bars and cocktail lounges, which was reflected in such songs as "Soft Lights and Sweet Music," "Night and Day," and "Deep Purple."

Ultimately, the Depression proved to be an era rich in musical composition, innovation, and variety. In particular, numerous music publishers who were clustered in New York City's Tin Pan Alley were dependent on the sale of sheet music, since recordings were rare. In order to produce a hit song, a composer had to write a good song, sell it to a popular singer, and hope for financial success. Successful Depression-era Tin Pan Alley songs included George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" (1930) and "Embraceable You" (1930); Jerome Kern's "All the Things You Are" (1939), "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (1933), and "I Won't Dance" (1934); Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" (1938); and Richard Rodgers's "Falling in Love with Love" (1938) and "This Can't Be Love" (1938).

During the same years, many of these composers also wrote Broadway musicals that featured songs of lasting popularity. These include Jerome Kern's Roberta (1933, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"), George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935, "Summertime"), Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's Babes in Arms (1937, "My Funny Valentine"), and Cole Porter's Red, Hot and Blue! (1936, "It's De-Lovely"). Another composer of note, Kurt Weill, a refugee from Adolf Hitler's Germany, composed Knickerbocker Holiday with Maxwell Anderson and gave the world the memorable "September Song" in 1938.

Many singers became successful radio performers during the Depression years, introducing popular songs that became identified with them. Kate Smith, for example, was associated with the songs "When the Moon Comes over the Mountain" and "God Bless America." Bing Crosby became linked with "When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day." Other popular Depression-era singers include Rudy Vallee, Vaughan McRae, and Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was the first singer to use a microphone to startling advantage; earlier singers tended to belt out songs in the style of AI Jolson, but the microphone made subtlety possible, and Sinatra began a new trend in vocal style. Sinatra and other singers generally got their start by singing with big bands, including those led by Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Guy Lombardo, and Paul Whiteman.

BLUES AND JAZZ

Blues music arose from people who had known hard times, exploitation, and violence long before the Depression. Blues songs were considered crude by many listeners in the first part of the twentieth century when they were first heard in such cities as New Orleans, Saint Louis, and Mobile, Alabama. But many Depression-era listeners responded to blues music because it was about life and release from troubles. The rhythms are danceable, requiring only a guitar and some type of percussion. Among the most important blues musicians in terms of his legacy for later American music, including rock and roll, was legendary Mississippian Robert Johnson. Such Johnson songs as "Me and the Devil Blues" (1937) inspired countless later musicians.

Both ragtime, a rhythmic piano-based music, and jazz, a multi-faceted musical form, derived from blues, and both exhibit the energy and rhythm of African music—handclapping, dancing, singing, and improvisation. Jazz surpassed blues in popularity during the 1930s, and many jazz musicians became well known and greatly in demand. In 1915, jazz was generally considered a form of folk music played primarily in the Deep South. Before long, however, such early jazz musicians as Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, and King Oliver became national stars. They could play, and they could improvise; improvisation is the very heart of jazz, making it spontaneous and dramatic.

Louis Armstrong mastered the improvisatory style on trumpet, sang as well as he played, and is credited with inventing scat singing. Armstrong came to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s, and he remained creative and popular until his death in 1971. One of Armstrong's contemporaries, Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, became an established entertainer, composer, and band leader by 1930. Gathering the best musicians he could find, Ellington led a band for fifty years and paid its members well so that he could hear his compositions as soon as he wrote them. Many of Ellington's compositions have become standards, including "Mood Indigo," "Satin Doll," "Black and Tan Fantasy," and "Sophisticated Lady."

Jazz bands evolved into big bands during the swing era, which began in the 1920s and lasted until after World War II. Popular big bands included Red Nichols and his Five Pennies, the Wolverines, and the Chicago Rhythm Kings. Swing music, which combined basic New Orleans jazz with the smoother Chicago style, employed a fast tempo, making the music appealing to dancers. Important swing bands included those led by Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, and Benny Goodman, who became known as the King of Swing.

Boogie-woogie, a fast-paced blues-influenced piano style with a steady, driving left-hand rhythm, was introduced in the mid-1930s. Originating in Chicago and Kansas City, boogie-woogie is a style for both listening and for frenzied dancing.

FOLK MUSIC AND THE WPA

During the 1930s, the Federal Music Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) kept musicians employed by paying them to give concerts and music lessons, to compose original works, and to talk to the public about music. The Federal Music Project collaborated with the WPA Federal Writers' Project to collect, catalogue, and research the nation's folk materials. As part of these efforts, the WPA authorized its employees to collect American folk songs, both old songs and new ones arising from the trying experiences of the 1930s. This project, particularly the contributions of Alan Lomax, resulted in a wealth of folk songs, many of which are available in state archives and the Library of Congress. The most comprehensive of these compilations of Depression-era songs is Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, compiled by Lomax and edited by Pete Seeger, with commentary by Woody Guthrie. Folksongs are often born of hardship and poverty, and the songs in this collection are no exception. Most of them have a strong blues component, as indicated by many of the titles, including "I Aint Got No Home in This World Anymore," "Depression Blues," "Hard Times in the Mill," and "Wanderin'."

Folksinger and songwriter Woody Guthrie traveled around the United States during the Depression, forming his musical ideas in hobo camps, where he listened to drifters and the dispossessed, learning songs passed down through many generations and giving a voice to the downtrodden, the poverty-stricken, and the hopeless. He wrote and sang about what he saw and experienced, with many songs expressing social commentary and love for America, including the familiar "God Blessed America," commonly known as "This Land Is Your Land."

Another major influence in folk music during the Depression years was Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. Leadbelly was discovered by folklorists John and Alan Lomax while he was serving a prison sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1933. The Lomaxes recorded hundreds of his songs, which eventually would include "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" and "Good-night Irene," and brought him and his music to the attention of a worldwide audience by the second half of the 1930s.

COUNTRY MUSIC

Singing comes easily to country people—songs that tell stories, songs that have been handed down through oral tradition, songs that break the monotony of farm life. Country music developed in the rural South and in America's isolated mountain regions, often remaining unchanged for generations, until improved methods of communication were introduced. The term hillbilly music became popular in the early 1900s and referred to a type of music that was sincere, if raw, and that spoke of God, home, unrequited love, and real life occurrences.

Jimmie Rodgers is known as the Father of Country Music. A country boy from Mississippi, his entire life was disjointed, unsettled, and frequently sad. However, he combined all these experiences with humor, a simple and straightforward singing style, and his own signature "blue yodel," a cross between a Swiss Alpine yodel and a blues moan. Rodgers's songs were a mixture of random tunes, blues, and jazz, a legacy of inimitable modern country music. Even though poverty was rampant in the South, it is said that during the Depression the standard order in general stores was "a sack of flour, a slab of bacon, and the latest Jimmie Rodgers record."

CLASSICAL MUSIC

By 1929, composers in the United States were seeking to produce original American music that reflected American culture and did not simply imitate European styles. Some composers looked for inspiration in Anglo-American folk music; others looked to African-American spirituals, blues, and jazz, all of which were now well established in American culture.

Aaron Copland set about to develop a musical style with a distinctly American sound. In the 1920s, his compositions incorporated influences from jazz and blues. During the Depression years, Copland adopted a leftist, populist outlook that was evident in such works as the ballet Billy the Kid (1938). His best-known composition, Appalachian Spring (1943–1944), continued in the same folk-inspired tradition.

William Grant Still studied composition at Oberlin College in Ohio and in New York with Edgard Varese. William Still played in theater and nightclub orchestras, an experience he combined with his formal training in composition to produce his symphonic works, which included Africa (1930), Afro-American Symphony (1931), the opera Blue Steel (1933), and Lenox Avenue (1937). All these works reflected Still's African-American culture and traditions.

Other important composers of the period include Howard Hanson, longtime director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, who composed several symphonies, two of which premiered in the 1930s, forming milestones for the post-Romantic movement. Randall Thompson is recognized for choral and symphonic works. He composed his Second Symphony in 1931 and the Peaceable Kingdom, an a cappella piece for mixed voices, in 1936. In 1940 Thompson composed Alleluia, a choral number that became well established in the repertoire of American choirs. Roy Harris, who was classically trained in harmony and orchestration, heard his First Symphony performed in Boston in 1934 under the baton of Serge Koussevitsky. His Second Symphony was performed in 1936, and his Third Symphony in 1939. Harris wrote the overture "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" in 1934 to "express ... emotions particularly American and in an American manner."

Virgil Thomson studied music at Harvard University and composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Thomson later formed a friendship with the author Gertrude Stein in Paris, and the two collaborated in writing the opera Four Saints in Three Acts, which made Thomson famous. This opera premiered in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1934, and transferred to Broadway twelve days later, where it was an immediate success. Thomson's other compositions include music for theater, film, and ballet, as well as religious choral music.

See Also: ANDERSON, MARIAN; ARMSTRONG, LOUIS; BIG BAND MUSIC; "BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?"; ELLINGTON, DUKE; FEDERAL MUSIC PROJECT (FMP); GERSHWIN, GEORGE AND IRA; GOODMAN, BENNY; GUTHRIE, WOODY; HOLIDAY, BILLIE; JAZZ; LOMAX, ALAN; RADIO.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Conte, Bob. Portrait of American Music: Great Twentieth-Century Musicians. 1989.

Cowell, Sidney Robertson, compiler. California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties. American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Available at: www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/afccchtml/cowhome.html

Green, Stanley. "The Thirties." In Songs of the 30's: Piano, Vocal, Guitar. 1989.

Lloyd, Norman. The Golden Encyclopedia of Music. 1968.

Lomax, Alan, compiler, and Pete Seeger, ed. Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People. 1967.

Reid, William, Jr. Popular Music in American History. 1981.

NATOMA N. NOBLE