In this exuberant sequel to his prize-winning The Jazz Age , Arnold Shaw captures virtually every aspect of popular music during the Depression.
Readers visit every corner of the music scene.
We watch as the Hollywood musical takes off, highlighted by the brilliant Busby Berkeley and the luminous partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, and Cole Porter. From Gershwin's Porgy and Bess to Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , from Woody Guthrie to Ethel Merman, and from the Carioca to the Lindy Hop, here is an affectionate and informative account of this golden era of popular song. Arnold Shaw was Director of the Popular Music Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He died in 1989, soon after completing the manuscript for Let's Dance .