Reveals how the new technologies of mass culture--the phonograph, radio, and film--played a key role in accelerating the diffusion of jazz as a modernist art form across the nation's racial divide. Focuses on four cities--New Orleans, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles--to show how each city produced a distinctive style of jazz.

Takes readers back to the 1920s and early 1930s to describe how jazz musicians navigated the rocky racial terrain of the music business - and how new media like the phonograph, radio, and film accelerated its diffusion and contributed to variations in its styles. It describes the distinctive styles that developed in four cities and tells how the opportunities of each influenced both musicians' choices and the marketing of their music.