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Louis Armstrong, in a white shirt, blows into his trumpet during a concert. His eyes are closed.

“Just Jazz,” The Trailblazing Radio Show, Now at the Library

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

From 1961 to 1976, Ed Beach hosted “Just Jazz” on WRVR-FM in New York City. Beach played jazz — soloists, bands, traditional, modern — ranging from the early 1920s to the 1970s.  He featured artists who achieved great fame — Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, Max Roach — along with musicians new to his audience. The show is now preserved online by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a joint project of the Library of Congress and the Boston public broadcaster GBH.

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

The Gorgeous Jazz Age Photography of Alfred Cheney Johnston

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The court photographer for the Ziegfeld Follies, Alfred Cheney Johnston -- who later donated more than 200 of his photographs to the Library -- captured the era and helped create the modern celebrity glamour shot. He was one of the first celebrity photographers. Stars such as Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, Helen Hayes, John Barrymore, Barbara Stanwyck, Dorothy and Lillian Gish and Marilyn Miller all flocked to him. His star faded over time, but is remembered in an elegant photobook, "Jazz Age Beauties,"

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Inquiring Minds: Exploring the Culture of Jazz Through Music and More

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Robert O’Meally spent two weeks in residence at the Library of Congress earlier this year researching all things jazz. He is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and an authority on Ralph Ellison and African-American literature. He is also an internationally recognized scholar of jazz and founder of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

World War I: American Jazz Delights the World

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Ryan Reft, a historian in the Manuscript Division. In the afterglow of the armistice in 1918 that ended World War I, Europe, and particularly the city of Paris, exhibited a wild exuberance. In mid-January 1919, future civil rights pioneer and American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) officer Charles Hamilton Houston encapsulated …