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Swingin' the Dream : Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture
Swingin' the Dream Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture Author:Lewis A. Erenberg During the 1930s, swing bands combined jazz and popular music to create large-scale dreams for the Depression generation, capturing the imagination of America's young people, music critics, and the music business. Swingin' the Dream explores that world, looking at the racial mixing-up and musical swinging-out that shook the nation and has... more » kept people dancing ever since.
"Swingin' the Dream is an intelligent, provocative study of the big band era, chiefly during its golden hours in the 1930s; not merely does Lewis A. Erenberg give the music its full due, but he places it in a larger context and makes, for the most part, a plausible case for its importance."--Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World
"An absorbing read for fans and an insightful view of the impact of an important homegrown art form."--Publishers Weekly
"[A] fascinating celebration of the decade or so in which American popular music basked in the sunlight of a seemingly endless high noon."--Tony Russell, Times Literary Supplement« less