52nd Street: The Street of Jazz

by Arnold Shaw

Back in the thirties and forties, when New York City was the capital of the jazz world-you could hail a cab, ask the driver to take you to "The Street," and find yourself on 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Musicians, jazz lovers, college students, big businessmen-everybody knew that this was "The Street that Never Slept," the Street where every night was New Year's Eve, the Street that Variety editor Abel Green so aptly dubbed "America's Montmartre." Here, for the price of a drink or two, you could walk through the whole history of jazz. Hot jazz was born and raised on The Street, as were the big swing bands of the thirties and the modern "cool" jazz combos of the forties. Comics like Alan King and Joey Adams got their start on the Street, as did musicians like Erroll Garner, Jack Teagarden, and Coleman Hawkins. Bessie Smith performed on the Street, and so did Count Basie, Charlie "Bird" Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Sarah Vaughn, the Dorsey Brothers, Artie Shaw, and other jazz greats.Arnold Shaw was there-as musician, composer, PR man, and just plain listener-and he recreates for us the three swinging decades that were the history if the Street: its birth in Prohibition-era speakeasies, where musicians jammed for gin or just for the fun of it; its post-Repeal blossoming as the center of the jazz universe, lined up and down on both sides with tiny, smoke-filled rooms where black and white musicians played to capacity crowds; its postwar decline as the Street became a tawdy tenderloin of strip and clip joints.

Genres: Music, History, Jazz

378 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1971

About the author

Arnold Shaw, born Arnold Sokolof, was an American musicologist, composer and author. He received his BA in English literature from the City College of New York in 1929 and his MA from Columbia University in 1931. He pursued further studies in American Literature at New York University.

During his career in the music publishing industry, he began writing about music for various newspapers and magazines, and eventually began writing books about music and musicians. He won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award two times, in 1968 and 1979, and was also posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame for his book 'Honkers And Shouters: The Golden Years Of Rhythm & Blues'. He was also a songwriter, but found relatively little success in that field.

In 1979, Mr. Shaw proposed the creation of a music literature course titled "History of Rock Music" which he would teach on a part-time basis for the UNLV Music Department. His proposal was accepted and he began teaching the course in the fall of 1980. While he taught there, he founded the Popular Music Research Center at the UNLV College of Arts and Letters, which was named in his honor following his death in late 1989.

Reviews

[Tad Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had always thought of 52nd Street fans the cradle of bebop in the ‘40s. I had no idea its history as the street of music was so deep and rich. Arnold Shaw brings it to life.

[David]

Recommended in Dangerous Rhythms by TJ English

[Vanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found 52nd Street: The Street of Jazz a wonderful help to me in my own work. Well-written with a breezy style the book makes you feel like you are part of the 3os, 40s jazz scene or rather it makes you wish you were. It goes through every club you could imagine, specifying which were controlled by the Mafia (most were) and which were not.

The second in my series of books about LGBT life takes place in the nightclub world. This book has helped immensely in creating the reality of that time. This isn't the kind of book that you read and then put down--finished. It is a book you return to many times because there is too much information to take in the first time.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice long interviews make you feel like you were there when the street was the center of the jazz world. For some reason it took me a while to get through this, but I enjoyed it when I could find time.