- Home
- Music / Culture
- music
- social science
- Some Liked It Hot
Some Liked It Hot
Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928–1959
Series: Music / Culture
Sales Date: 2009-06-01
Investigates the changing representations of jazz women in American culture
Women have been involved with jazz since its inception, but all too often their achievements were not as well known as those of their male counterparts. Some Liked It Hot looks at all-girl bands and jazz women from the 1920s through the 1950s and how they fit into the nascent mass culture, particularly film and television, to uncover some of the historical motivations for excluding women from the now firmly established jazz canon. This well-illustrated book chronicles who appeared where and when in over 80 performances, captured in both popular Hollywood productions and in relatively unknown films and television shows.
As McGee shows, these performances reflected complex racial attitudes emerging in American culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Her analysis illuminates the heavily mediated representational strategies that jazz women adopted, highlighting the role that race played in constituting public performances of various styles of jazz from "swing" to "hot" and "sweet." The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Hazel Scott, the Ingenues, Peggy Lee, and Paul Whiteman are just a few of the performers covered in the book, which also includes a detailed filmography.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
JAZZ CULTURE AND ALL-GIRL FILMS
The Feminization of Mass Culture and the Novelty of All-Girl Bands
The Ingenues and the Harlem Playgirls
ALL GIRL BANDS AND SOUND FILMS IN THE SWING ERA
Phil Spitalny's Musical Queens
The "Blonde Bombshell of Swing": Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears
SOUNDIES AND FEATURES DURING THE 1940s
Swinging the Classics: Hazel Scott and Hollywood's Musical-Racial Matrix
Pin-ups, Patriotism, and Feminized Genres
Swing-Centered Films and the Hour of Charm
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Independent Black Sound Film
VARIETY TELEVISION AND THE 1950s
Television, Vaudeo, and Female Musical Hosts
Variety Television Revives All-Girl Bands
Television's Musical Guests: Hazel Scott, Peggy Lee, and Lena Horne
Conclusion: The Jazz Canon (Representations and Gendered Absences)
Filmography
Notes
Bibliography •Index
KRISTIN A. McGEE is an assistant professor of popular music at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
"A remarkable book in every respect. Although one can find several other books on this topic, this study stands above the rest for its accuracy, scholarly discipline, thoroughness of research, and detailed analysis. ... A Stunning achievement. Essential."
~G.A. Foster, Choice
"McGee's "multidisciplinary work draws on the combined assumptions of ethnography and historiography to create an integrated , well rounded, and complete picture of the relatively unknown female jazz musicians as portrayed on the large and small screens. The book is well organized and penned in a decisively scholarly (though, thankfully, unpretentious) tone.""
~Edward R. Schmidtke, Film & History
""A remarkable book in every respect. Although one can find several other books on this topic, this study stands above the rest for its accuracy, scholarly discipline, thoroughness of research, and detailed analysis. ... A Stunning achievement. Essential.""
~G.A. Foster, Choice
""In her engaged style, McGee has provided a clear examination and analysis of recordings, early film and television, and other source material, producing a convincing and compelling addition to musicology, jazz and feminist performance scholarship.""
~Monica Mays, Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology
"McGee's success in finding such a large number of all-girl bands is remarkable. Her prismatic way of presenting her findings allows us to see many facets of the issues—racial, gender, cultural, economic, and musical issues—and is painstaking, complex, and relentless."
~Angela Latham, author of Posing a Threat
"This very important work investigates how questions of gender and race intersected not only with music but with film, television, radio, and the recording industry.""
~Lucy Fischer, director of film studies, University of Pittsburgh
Related Books
