When I was new to the music, all the standard histories of jazz were keen to dismiss what they derisively referred to as the “Vaudeville Blues” singers of the Jazz Age. I remember one line in ...

At the height of the Roaring Twenties, flappers took to the floor, arms flailing and feet kicking to a new beat: the Charleston. A century later, the dance still captivates—especially for performer, ...

The early 1920s were caught between the lingering hardships of World War I and the exuberance of the Jazz Age that would come to define the Roaring Twenties. In America, speakeasies were springing up ...