In the early 20th Century female performers ... would be a jazz ballad if it weren’t for this overwhelming lyrical despondency. “Everybody got the blues. You take the little baby that layin ...

A century ago, the prosperous, post-World War I “Jazz Age” drummed out one tumultuous social change after another. On the ...

Though jazz and classic blues are really early twentieth-century black music innovations ... New Orleans galas where light-skinned slave women were auctioned off to the highest bidder. There were ...

and that female singers were foundational to this body of work. Tracing a piece called “Mamie’s Blues,” Wald offers a capsule history of the sexual economy of turn-of-the-century New Orleans ...