Burton W. Peretti teaches the humanities at Pellissippi State College. His articles on the cultural aspects of jazz have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, and he has also written The Creation of Jazz.

Involving...it breaks new ground...There is an important story to tell here.

• Part 1 IntroductionPart 2 FROM RAGTIME TO JAZZ IN THE 1910s 10Chapter 3 A modernizing society. Ragtime. Black musicians and the city. James Reese Europe and nightlife. New Orleans. World War I.Part 4 HOT AND SWEET, WHITE AND BLACK: THE JAZZ AGE 31Chapter 5 The first jazz vogue of the 1920s. Post-Victorian mass leisure. Debate between modernists and traditionalists. African-American communities and jazz. Musicians and the color line.Part 6 THE GREAT DEPRESSION, THE "COMMON MAN," AND THE SWING ERA 61Chapter 7 Growth of the music and the business. Economic impact of the depression. Political reform and the culture of the thirties. The swing boom in New Deal context.Part 8 JAZZ GOES TO WAR 85Chapter 9 Economic upheavals after 1939 in society and popular music. Music on the home front and overseas. Evolution of musical tastes. Dixieland and bebop. Critics, musicians, and the postwar temper.Part 10 COOL JAZZ, HARD BOP, AFFLUENCE, AND ANXIETY 109Chapter 11 Avant-garde music for the atomic age. Jazz and the cold war. Musicians and deviance. California cool. Accelerating change in the late fifties.Part 12 "WE INSIST": JAZZ INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE 1960s 134Chapter 13 Jazz and the civil rights movement. The avant-garde and Black Power. The rock revolution and the apparent decline of jazz.Part 14 FUSION AND FRAGMENTATION: JAZZ AT THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY 155Chapter 15 Fusion and funk in the early seventies. Jazz, country, and the politics of culture. Conservatism and "classic" jazz in the eighties. Race, class, and jazz into the 1990s.Part 16 Epilogue 177Part 17 Suggested Reading 185Part 18 Index 191