This book is filled with secrets, surprises, and delights. You will be introduced to, and become quite intimate with, the creation of everything that makes up entertainment and the activities that brought smiles to the faces of North America. Covering the roots of jazz, vaudeville, burlesque, big bands, silent movies, ragtime, television, bare-knuckle prize fights, minstrel shows, circus and carnivals, bebop, medicine shows, jug bands, bicycles, musicians’ drugs, radio, Model Ts, paddlewheelers, roller- skates, the blues, barnstorming, gramophones, dancing, barbershop quartets, stage microphones, Tin Pan Alley, washboard bands, swing, wild west shows and more. Lots of photographs and insight to subjects that you thought you knew about. Douglas Edward Fraser is a musicologist with a lifetime of knowledge. He includes many personal and family stories that have been chronicled from the experiences of three generations of professional entertainers. This is a book like no other, and it has been written to entertain and enlighten the readers that enjoy the Old West, Victorian, Edwardian and jazz eras.
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