The House That George Built
With a Little Help from Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty
Chapter 1
The Road to Berlin
There are several ways of defining and measuring an era, but an excellent place to start is by checking out the media of the day and what they could or could not do at the moment. For example, when sound recording first came along, the singers belted into it as if performing to an empty stadium. The name that springs to mind is Caruso, the world’s biggest voice. But with the coming of microphones in the 1920s, singing became more personal, and the name became Bing Crosby, the world’s friendliest voice. So songs became brisker and less operatic, to suit not only the mike but the piano rack and the record cabinet. In short, the familiar thirty-two-bar song, which now seems to have been fixed in the stars, was actually fixed by the practicalities of sheet-music publishing and confirmed by the limitations of ten-inch records.
Or one might define an era in terms of women’s fashions and the consequent rise of impulse dancing on improvised dance floors. You can’t really jitterbug in a ...
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