American Music Timeline - 1900-1920

Symphony Hall built in Boston

"Country" music of southeastern U.S. features guitar, fiddle banjo, harmonica - direct descendant of English, Scottish, Irish ballads, folk songs

"Western" musical genre spreads through western states, features steel guitars and large bands; singing cowboys

Based on Mississippi River boat music and black, French, Spanish piano music, jazz develops in New Orleans brothels, honky-tonk bars

George M. Cohan's musical play, Little Johnny Jones, followed by Forty-five Minutes from Broadway, 1906, help create indigenous American musical theater

Florenz Ziegfeld launches Ziegfeld Follies, elaborate musical stage shows, through 1931, starring such performers as Billie Burke, Fannie Brice, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers

Popular songwriter Irving Berlin completes "Alexander's Ragtime Band," his first hit; culmination of ragtime craze

Composer, band leader, "father of the blues," William Christopher Handy publishes Memphis Blues, helps inaugurate new style based on rural black folk music

President Woodrow Wilson issues executive order making "The Star-Spangled Banner" the national anthem. Congress confirms it, 1931

Charles Albert Tindley, first black gospel composer to be published, releases New Songs of Paradise, collection of 37 gospel works