Introduction: the 1920 - 1929 era
In the wake of Allied victory in the Great
War, America came to the forefront as the most potent world
power. With a flourishing economy and wide-open markets for her
manufactured goods, she could face the future with unbounded
optimism. Unlike in Europe, there was no need for her to
re-examine foundational values, no bitter recriminations over
military incompetence, no cities to be rebuilt from the ashes
and rubble of war. For the first time in history, the New World
had the moral and economic clout to dictate to the Old.
America had taken the lead in many areas of
science and the arts, including music. Jazz emerged as a
powerful creative force, assimilating and reinterpreting many
tributary streams of old-world influences, capturing the spirit
of the age with its air of excitement and sensuality.
In post-war America, the average factory
worker could afford a Model T Ford. Millions of Americans began
taking to the road for business and pleasure.
The first licensed radio broadcast in
Pittsburgh in 1920 caused great excitement across the nation,
and as other local stations sprang up, radio rapidly overtook
the phonograph as the primary form of home entertainment. Sales
of phonograph machines and records nosedived, and small
independent record companies, which had sprung up after the
duopoly of Victor and Columbia had lost their grip on lateral
recording technology around 1919, were forced into mergers.
Their survival became dependent on being able to supply big
chain-store outlets with cheap product.
Sound tracks came to the movie screen
during this era. The electric microphone made it possible for
any singer to be heard above an orchestra or in a crowded
dance-hall without the use of a voice-trumpet, and the crooning
vocalist would soon overtake the band-leader as the star of the
show.
Electric recording technology first
appeared in 1925, and the old-fashioned 'acoustic' method of
'cutting a record,'
where the sound went through an enormous
centrally-placed horn into an adjacent room where a master
recording was being cut directly into the 'wax,' soon came to
an end.
The fluid, organic lines of Art Nouveau
style, which had permeated advertising art in the pre-war
period, was unsuited to the brashness of the Jazz Age. A new
style was born, featuring stark, straight lines and geometric
curves. 'Art Deco' was so-called from the Exposition
Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels
Modernes, an international exhibition of industrial applied
design, held in Paris in 1925.
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