Music history of the United States (1900–1940)

Eastern European Jews contributed klezmer music to American culture, with the earliest stars including Harry Kandel, Naftule Brandwein, Dave Tarras and Abe Schwartz.

At the heights of the Great Depression, gospel music started to become popular by people like Thomas A. Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson, who adapted Christian hymns to blues and jazz structures.

Itinerant jack leg preachers like Blind Willie Johnson and Washington Phillips released recordings that are now collector's items but were then only marginally popular.

In spite of the controversy, jazz emerged as the dominant sound of the country in the late 1920s in popularized forms that some called watered down, like swing music and big band.

In the 1940s, pure jazz began to become more popular, along with the blues, with artists like Ella Fitzgerald ("A-Tisket, A-Tasket") and Billie Holiday ("Strange Fruit") becoming nationally successful.

The major underpinnings of the style were in place by 1900 or a bit before, when New Orleans, Louisiana produced musicians like Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton and Kid Ory.

Most characteristically, players entered solos against riffing by other horns, and were followed by a closing with the drummer playing a four-bar tag that was then answered by the rest of the band.

Alongside the Great Depression, many musicians from poor, rural Southern states like Louisiana moved to the north, especially New York City and Chicago, Louis Armstrong was among them, and he helped make Chicago the center for musical innovation in the country before moving on to New York, where clubs like Cotton Club, Village Vanguard and Minton's were flourishing.

The mid-1930s were the peak of big band swing, with artists like Charlie Barnet, Chick Webb and Benny Goodman rising to the ranks of esteemed-band leaders.

Jead Goldkette and Ben Pollack were also early influential African American swing musicians, and were followed by yet more dance-oriented swing bands led by Jimmie Lunceford, Earl Hines, Don Redman, Count Basie, Glen Gray, Dorsey Brothers, Bob Crosby, Luis Russell, Andy Kirk, Glenn Miller, and Benny Carter.

The song was a regional hit that paved the way for Cleoma's brother, Amédée Breaux's "Jolie Blonde", now often considered the Cajun national anthem.

Luderin Darbone's The Hackleberry Ramblers and Harry Choates were the vanguard of this new wave of Cajun music, which incorporated English lyrics and a smooth style.

By the 1940s, though a revival of traditional Cajun music had begun, led by Iry LeJeune, whose 1948 "La valse du pont d'amour" is considered a watershed in the field.

Bristol, a city on the Virginia and Tennessee border, was the site of a two-week recording session in 1927 that led to the discovery of the two biggest names in hillbilly music: The Carters and Jimmie Rodgers.

The Carters were a trio playing Auto-harp and Guitar, with clear, strong vocals and harmonies, while Rodgers sang a more worldly, blues-influenced music that has been called country blues.

Rodgers sold millions of records in the 1930s During this period, hillbilly music became big business, and musicians began endorsing products as well as adding new instruments, like fiddles, banjos, mandolins and Hawaiian steel guitar.