Some Liked It Hot

by McGee, Kristin A.

• ISBN13: 9780819569080
• ISBN10: 0819569089
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-06-01
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

KRISTIN A. MCGEE is an assistant professor of popular music at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Jazz Culture and All-Girl Films
The Feminization of Mass Culture and the Novelty of All-Girl Bands	p. 19
The Ingenues and the Harlem Playgirls	p. 34
All-Girl Bands and Sound Films in the Swing Era
Phil Spitalny's Musical Queens	p. 67
The "Blonde Bombshell of Swing": Ina Ray Hutton and Her Melodears	p. 86
Soundies and Features during the 1940s
Swinging the Classics: Hazel Scott and Hollywood's Musical-Racial Matrix	p. 113
Pinups, Patriotism, and Feminized Genres	p. 134
Swing-Centered Films and the Hour of Charm	p. 168
The International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Independent Black Sound Film	p. 180
Variety Television and the 1950s
Television, Vaudeo, and Female Musical Hosts	p. 201
Variety Television Revives All-Girl Bands	p. 211
Television's Musical Variety Guests: Hazel Scott, Peggy Lee, and Lena Horne	p. 221
Conclusion: The Jazz Canon (Representations and Gendered Absences)	p. 245
Filmography	p. 259
Notes	p. 265
Bibliography	p. 275
Index	p. 299
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.