Band-Aids, hair dryers, the automobile with combustion engine, Kool-Aid, Q-Tips, bread slicers and traffic lights. These are just some of the products invented in the 1920s, The Jazz Age, where flapper dresses were the uniform of the day, and songs were written that celebrated the gender bending of the time. Could you imagine reading the diary of a young woman written in the 20s? Ahh, those were the days! From Wikipedia:

The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity, a break with traditions. Everything seemed to be feasible through modern technology. New technologies, especially automobiles, movies and radio proliferated ‘modernity’ to a large part of the population. Formal decorative frills were shed in favor of practicality, in architecture as well as in daily life. At the same time, amusement, fun and lightness were cultivated in jazz and dancing, in defiance of the horrors of World War I, which remained present in people’s minds.”

In the next installment of our acclaimed Lyrics and Lyricists series this weekend, Robert Kimball and Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks heat things up with sizzling jazz by DeSylva, Brown & Henderson, the megastars of Prohibition-Era Tin Pan Alley who turned out hits like “Button Up Your Overcoat,” “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” “You’re the Cream in My Coffee.” Program notes can be viewed here.

Upcoming Lyrics and Lyricists: