Vaudeville Melodies : Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929 / Nicholas Gebhardt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gebhardt, Nicholas, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vaudeville--United States--19th century--History and criticism.

Vaudeville.

Vaudeville--United States--20th century--History and criticism.

Revues--United States--19th century--History and criticism.

Revues.

Revues--United States--20th century--History and criticism.

Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.)--United States--History--19th century.

Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.).

Music-halls (Variety-theaters, cabarets, etc.)--United States--History--20th century.

Popular music--United States.

Popular music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

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. In Vaudeville Melodies, 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:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. That's Entertainment

Chapter Two. There's No Business Like Show Business

Chapter Three. Rites of Passage

Chapter Four. Elementary Structures

Chapter Five. Show Me the Money

Chapter Six. On with the Show

Chapter Seven. In Search of an Audience

Chapter Eight. Vaudeville Melodies

Chapter Nine. Nothing Succeeds Like Success

Chapter Ten. Applause

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226448725

022644872X

OCLC:

970659217