Swing Changes

Bands were playing, people were dancing, the music business was booming. It was the big-band era, and swing was giving a new shape and sound to American culture. Swing Changes looks at New Deal America through its music and shows us how the contradictions and tensions within swing—over race, politics, its own cultural status, the role of women—mirrored those played out in the larger society. Drawing on memoirs, oral histories, newspapers, magazines, recordings, photographs, literature, and films, Swing Changes offers a vibrant picture of American society at a pivotal time, and a new perspective on music as a cultural force.

This excellent book on the Swing Era, its music and meaning, is a model of interdisciplinary social history, combining music, business, economics, and politics in a seamless and fascinating chronicle… An intelligent and lively book, peppered with astute historical and musical observations., Swing Changes, with its emphasis on the importance of social elements in the creation of meaning in swing, is an excellent example of how jazz and other arts are being studied now in some quarters of the academy. Stowe writes in a clear style and with a thorough knowledge of swing-era American history., [An] excellent achievement. [Stowe] has placed swing at center stage in jazz history, linked it to the New Deal, and helped make it worth the attention of historians who have too long ignored America’s musical past., David Stowe is…the first writer to have attempted a systematic history of the relationship between jazz and New Deal America… An interesting book., Stowe has written a fascinating social history of swing jazz, which dominated popular music from about 1935 to the late 1940s. He characterizes swing as the preeminent musical expression of the New Deal ethos… Explaining the social context that allowed swing to flourish, Stowe describes the importance of Down Beat magazine; the United Hot Clubs of America; booking agencies; live, commercially sponsored radio broadcasts; and the jukebox… This clearly written and well-researched social history of New Deal America through its popular music is highly recommended.

David W. Stowe is Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures and director of American Studies at Michigan State University.