This book tells the astonishing story of how hot music became the dominant American music - how it outlasted sentimental waltzes and parlor ballads, symphonic marches and Tin Pan Alley novelty numbers. Via minstrel shows, "coon" songs, whorehouses, knife fights and other low-life phenomena, Stomp And Swerve immortalizes a motley collection of performers heretofore unkown to all but the most avid musicologists and collectors.

CONTENTS:
Introduction Love and Strife
Drive & Swerve; Afro-Celtic Fusion
Part I Minstrelsy, or Get Out de Way
America's First Music Craze; The Horrors and Delights of Blackface Entertainment
Part II Ragtime, or All Coons Alike
Ragtime's Buried Roots: Brass Bands & the Birth of the Record Industry; Banjos, Coon Songs & Vocal Groups
Part III Black Folk's Opera
Blues Into Jazz; The Pathology of an Infection: The Blues in New Orleans and New York; Two Crazes: Jazz 1917-1921 / The Blues 1920-1924; Birth of a New Art: Enrico Caruso, a Whole Bunch of Other Guys and Louis Armstrong
CODA Emmett's Childrenn, or Hillbilly Music

DAVID WONDRICH is the author of Esquire Drinks and writes about music and cocktails for publications such as the New York Times, Esquire and the Village Voice.

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