Music : Boston's Musical Communities

Documents Boston's jazz scene at mid-century. Boston jazz came into its own during the World War II years. Reportage and personal anecdotes, dozens of photographs, advertisements, and period maps. This complete study also includes extensive notes, a bibliography, discography, and comprehensive index. Author Richard Vacca is a writer and editor with a lifelong interest in cultural history, and he writes and speaks regularly about Boston's jazz and nightlife. He spent seven years researching and writing The Boston Jazz Chronicles. Vacca blogs at troystreet.com and The book is also available in the Internet Archive (free registration required)

When people think of blues they usually don't think of Boston. Yet Boston -- and New England in general -- has nurtured scores of national blues musicians, executives, producers and advocates of the music. This is a collection of their struggles and triumphs in the business -- about what they do and why they've chosen this music.

From the 1940s to the mid-1960s, on several evenings a week, thousands of Irish and Irish Americans flocked from miles around to the huge, bustling dance halls - the Intercolonial, the Hibernian, Winslow Hall, the Dudley Street Opera House, the Rose Croix - that dotted Boston's Dudley Square. See You at the Hall brings to life the rich history of the American capitol of Galway through the eyes of those who gathered and performed there. Traces the colorful dance hall period from its beginnings in 1940s Roxbury, when masses of young Irish flooded Boston following World War II, through its peak years in the 1950s, to its decline in the 1960s, when reduced immigration, urban social upheaval, and a shift in neighborhood demographics brought an end to the heyday of Irish dance hall music in Boston. Today, Irish traditional music is experiencing a major revival, and Boston still boasts a lively Irish music scene.

Blaring the Cream anthem "I Feel Free," WBCN went on the air in March 1968 as an experiment in free-form rock on the fledgling FM radio band. It broadcast its final song, Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," in August 2009. In between, WBCN became the musical, cultural, and political voice of the young people of Boston and New England, sustaining a vibrant local music scene that launched such artists as the J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, James Taylor, Boston, the Cars, and the Dropkick Murphys, as well as paving the way for Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, U2, and many others.

In this anecdotal, illustrated history Milano shows what gives Boston its distinctive sound--tales of the local bands who played not in the Gahden or even at the legendary Boston Tea Party of late 60s fame and legend, but at The Rat, Club 47, the Lizard Lounge, and all the other clubs, boites, and dives Milano has been haunting since he first arrived in the city as a college student smitten with rock.

South End Shout details the power of music in the city's African American community, spotlighting the era of ragtime culture in the early 1900s to the rise of big band orchestras in the 1930s. This story is deeply embedded in the larger social condition of Black Bostonians and the account is brought to life by the addition of 20 illustrations of musicians, theaters, dance halls, phonographs, and radios used to enjoy the music.