THE JAZZ AGE!

• Louis Armstrong is shown here playing with white musicians. The politics of the time had a lot do with whites and blacks playing in bands together.

The trumpet was his thing!

And boy, could he swing!!

The white musicians thought the blacks just played by ear and couldn’t read sheet music, but although the blacks did improvise when playing, they did learn the sheet music. In fact, they learned it so well, they played without it a lot, which also made people think they couldn’t read music.

Dizzy Gillespie had style!

He called her "beyond category." She called him

"the encyclopedia of music, soul, sensitivity, jazz, art,

and love." Together, they were bride and groom in one of

the most successful marriages ever between a

composer and a vocalist. As critic Leonard Feather once noted, pairing jazz royalty

like Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington was "as logical as serving caviar

with champagne."

Ella Fitzgerald

Dizzy Gillespie

Another time, when we were playing in Laport Illinois, or is Laport in Indiana -anyway it wasn't far out of Chicago-it was another of those college towns, another girl and I were leaving the theatre when up steps a fresh college Guy and started in to bother us. Finally, when we didn't pay much attention to him, he grabs hold of the girl with me and started to drag her along. That proved just too bad for him for she was a dancer on the stage and a high kicker. The first thing that fellow knew he got a good swift kick right on the chin. He then beat it out of there in a hurry. As it happened we came through that town about ten days later and learned that the poor guy was in the hospital with the end of his tongue bitten off.

[The Dancer Kicks a Fresh man *2]

VAUDEVILLE LIFE!

“A boy who plays in de school orchestra

wanta to lead always. He is too fond of Swing. He maka monkey business. Unfortunately he

could not even reada de music with skill.”(Quote from Vito Cacciola)

As a social historian Fitzgerald became identified with "The Jazz Age": "It was an age of miracles, it was an age of art, it was an age of excess, and it was an age of satire." The Fitzgeralds went to France in the spring of 1924 seeking tranquility for his work. He wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Raphael, but the marriage was damaged by Zelda's involvement with a French naval aviator. The extent of the affair--if it was in fact consummated--is not known. On the Riviera the Fitzgeralds formed a close friendship with Gerald and Sara Murphy. The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris when the novel was published in April. The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald's technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view. Fitzgerald's achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income.

F. Scott Fitzgerald