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From Jazz To Swing: African-American Jazz Musicians And Their Music, 1890-1935 By Thomas Hennessey (Book Review), Gene H. Anderson

Music Faculty Publications

According to Hennessey, the purpose of the present text, an extension of his dissertation, "From Jazz Age to Swing: Black Musicians and Their Music, 1917-1935" (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1973), is to trace the interaction between the enormous sociological changes in America and the music of African American musicians from the origin of jazz to the beginning of the swing era. He claims that "the transformation of jazz from a primarily local music rooted in black folk traditions to the tightly managed product of a national industry controlled by white businessmen and aimed at a predominantly white mass market paralleled …