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Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions dukeupress. For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department. Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here. American demand for swing skyrocketed with the onslaught of war as millions—isolated from loved ones—sought diversion, comfort, and social contact through music and dance.
Although all-female jazz and dance bands had existed since the s, now hundreds of such groups, both African American and white, barnstormed ballrooms, theaters, dance halls, military installations, and makeshift USO stages on the home front and abroad. Filled with firsthand accounts of more than a hundred women who performed during this era and complemented by thorough—and eye-opening—archival research, Swing Shift not only offers a history of this significant aspect of American society and culture but also examines how and why whole bands of dedicated and talented women musicians were dropped from—or never inducted into—our national memory.
Lists with This Book. Jun 07, Katie rated it really liked it. This was a fascinating and entertaining read.
Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s
A truly in-depth examination of something I was completely unaware of. It is written with a great deal of respect for the members of the bands and for their interpretation of their own history. At the same time, it is partly a memoir of the author's own shifting attitudes about gender and race. She really does a great job of balancing gender, race, and class while maintaining a readable style.
I would absolutely recommend this book for fans of jazz, This was a fascinating and entertaining read.
I would absolutely recommend this book for fans of jazz, the s, women's history, and black history. Mar 04, Jared Gillins rated it did not like it Shelves: For my American popular music class. The shelf for this one should actually be "read enough. I wish I could have just discovered some good history instead of having to wade through her self-examining study of her study of this history.
Yeah, it's as muddled as that l For my American popular music class. Yeah, it's as muddled as that last sentence. I generally keep the books I've read in grad school, but I can easily see this one ending up on my Amazon Marketplace seller's list. Apr 28, KellyWells rated it liked it. I really liked this book but I'm giving it three stars because it is easy to get bogged down in it.
There is a wealth of information but not all is succinct. I do love a book about women musicians, though, and this one really gives a good idea about how women found their place in the musical professional world. Cristina rated it really liked it Jan 12, Maisie and Rosie propaganda portrayed women workers as attractive, competent, patriotic, and temporary.
Although the Rosie of mainstream advertising images was invariably white, the black press ran images of African American women workers as Rosie the Riveter, celebrating black women's wartime access to better-paying jobs in the defense sectors, drawing from their experiences to expose war plants that broke Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order forbidding race discrimination in the defense industries, and praising black women workers for their patriotism. Women workers, including those who played in the all-girl bands that crisscrossed the country during the s, reaped both the breaks and the drawbacks of being seen as patriotic Rosies and Maisies working the swing shift.
But Rosie wasn't just a woman worker. She was a particular kind of woman worker, whether she bucked rivets or took hot trumpet solos. The image of an independent Rosie the Riveter, rolling up her sleeves to reveal capable muscles, cheeks glowing with good health and self-esteem, proud of her labor, continues to circulate on feminist T-shirts, coffee mugs, and posters as an icon of women's potential.
But even the catchy novelty tune that provides Rosie's sound track reminds us that our strapping heroine will be riveting only as a conversationalist when "boyfriend Charlie" returns from the marines. So long as her man is away and her country is at war, Rosie will "work for victory" and spend her paycheck on "lots of war bonds. No, they were Rosie's "bad girl" coworkers -- women who were as reviled by society as Rosie was serenaded. The repugnance the general populace held for "bad Rosies" is part of the story that contemporary feminist posters and coffee cups tend to forget.
But this shadow side of Rosie the Riveter was very much apparent in wartime debates about whether women should take the place of men musicians who had been drafted or enlisted. The attitude that women musicians were pitching in for the war effort pervaded the publicity and reviews of the most successful all-girl bands whether the women in them had played professionally before the war or not. Women musicians might improve their chances for bookings and enhance their popularity by embracing a patriotic Rosie the Riveter identity, or they might risk accusations that they were selfish and unpatriotic by adopting a more enduring image.
Reeds player Deloros Conlee Goodspeed recalled her irritation at being bombarded by fans inquiring what she planned to do after the war. Although many women workers offered similar rejoinders, to imply that one's labor was disconnected from the war effort was a risky move for women to make during World War II. Publicity for all-girl bands tended to avoid this tack, instead balancing allusions to professionalism with promises of patriotism.
Some women musicians found ways to extract useful dimensions of Rosie the Riveter -- her public acceptability as a skilled worker rather than "daffy housewife" , for instance, and even her patriotism -- without necessarily subscribing to the notion that they were temporary substitutes for the real musicians off at war.
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Most of the women I interviewed, in fact, maintained self-identities as both patriots and professionals. What they had no choice about, however, was their audiences' tendency to think "Rosie the Riveter" when they saw an all-girl band on the stand and to interpret women musicians as substitutes, amateurs, or cheerleaders, no matter how well they performed. Figuring out ways to be taken seriously as musicians without appearing unpatriotic and self-interested was a particular challenge for women musicians during the s.
Oddly enough, being taken seriously as workers was a challenge faced by men musicians as well during World War II. At the same time that women workers were accepted in fields dominated by men, many of those fields, especially those deemed by the federal government to be "nonessential," were feminized as ideas about masculinity became unwaveringly affixed to military service.
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During the same years that women on the bandstand were asked, "What are you going to do when the war is over? Debates between the American Federation of Musicians AFM , the musicians' union, and various arms of the government over musicians' wartime roles were heated and can be traced in the pages of the trade magazines, including the AFM members' magazine, International Musician.
As early as December , Doron K. Antrim editorialized in the pages of International Musician that music should be considered an "essential industry," protected and supported by the government because of its value to the war effort. England had found music to be essential, Antrim argued, citing the use of live and piped music in British munitions plants. Debates about the essential or nonessential status of music were carefully monitored in musicians' periodicals, as the outcome of such decisions affected men readers' draft vulnerability. Although music was eventually found to be a luxury and musicians were conscripted along with other nonessential workers, the power of bands to cheer soldiers was recognized by the government, and musicians were expected to donate their time to bond drives, armed forces camps, and canteens.
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But the musicians got hearty handshakes to take home to their wives to buy supper with. Petrillo, the powerful and controversial AFM president from to and perhaps the most caricatured labor leader during World War II , waged widely criticized battles against "canned music," radio broadcasts by student musicians including the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Mich.
Along with other entertainment guilds and unions, the AFM struggled for and obtained an agreement with the uso United Services Organization that only union performers would be hired for Camp Shows. When military bands stepped up their public appearances, the ever-controversial Petrillo declared that they could not do radio broadcasts. A measure of Petrillo's power is that he emerged victorious from his tussle with the War Department, having secured an agreement that military bands could not perform jobs that might be filled by civilian union musicians.
Not surprisingly, this triumph further fueled critiques of the AFM's lack of patriotism. Throughout the war, the union also guaranteed drafted and enlisted musicians dues-free membership. While the demand for swing and the shortage of men musicians would seem to have placed all-girl bands in a good position to achieve some recognition and upgrade their working conditions, the battles between Petrillo and Uncle Sam left women AFM members in a tough spot. Women's claims to musical expertise did not bode well for their union brothers' struggles to be recognized as indispensable.
Public notions of women workers as temporary patriotic substitutes made their holding jobs perceived as morale boosting particularly appealing.
Swing Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the s by Sherrie Tucker
Whether band members were paid or not, public perceptions of all-girl bands as amateur were at odds with women AFM members' own ideas about their skills as well as with the AFM's battle to have music recognized as work. Despite popular notions of women workers as patriotic pinch hitters, most women musicians in all-girl bands during the war saw themselves as professionals, and most belonged to the AFM.
Union membership was imperative in order to work in hotels, restaurants, ballrooms, or radio. Trumpet player Laverne Wollerman whose stage name was Laverne Walters commented that serious women musicians in the s necessarily joined the AFM: When the young women rushed to the union office to join up, they were promptly fined; but, after that punitive initiation, they were accepted by the union throughout the war as viable, professional AFM members.
On the one hand, the AFM required loyalty and cooperation from women musicians more than ever before. On the other, if women musicians appeared ready, willing, and able to fill the demand for dance music, they weakened the AFM's case that men musicians were "workers, not shirkers.