1 option
Vaudeville melodies : popular musicians and mass entertainment in American culture, 1870-1929 / Nicholas Gebhardt.
LIBRA PN1968.U5 G43 2017
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Gebhardt, Nicholas, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Vaudeville--United States.
- Vaudeville.
- Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.).
- Revues.
- United States.
- Revues--United States.
- Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.)--United States.
- Popular music--United States.
- Popular music.
- Physical Description:
- xii, 179 pages ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
- Summary:
- If you enjoy popular music and culture today, you have vaudeville to thank. From the 1870s until the 1920s, vaudeville was the dominant context for popular entertainment in the United States, laying the groundwork for the music industry we know today. Nicholas Gebhardt introduces us to the performers, managers, and audiences who turned disjointed variety show acts into a phenomenally successful business. First introduced in the late nineteenth century, by 1915 vaudeville was being performed across the globe, incorporating thousands of performers from every branch of show business. Its astronomical success relied on a huge network of theatres, each part of a circuit and administered from centralized booking offices. Gebhardt shows us how vaudeville transformed relationships among performers, managers, and audiences, and argues that these changes affected popular music culture in ways we are still seeing today. Drawing on firsthand accounts, Gebhardt explores the practices by which vaudeville performers came to understand what it meant to entertain an audience, the conditions in which they worked, the institutions they relied upon, and the values they imagined were essential to their success.
- Contents:
- That's entertainment
- There's no business like show business
- Rites of passage
- Elementary structures
- Show me the money
- On with the show
- In search of an audience
- Vaudeville melodies
- Nothing succeeds like success
- Applause.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780226448558
- 022644855X
- 9780226448695
- 022644869X
- OCLC:
- 955275242
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.