American Music

  • Benjamin Franklin invents the Glass Harmonica

  • Star Spangled Banner

  • Period: to

    Trail of Tears

  • Period: to

    Jenny Lind U.S. tour

  • Gottschalk’s “The Banjo”

  • Stephen Foster’s “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair”

  • Slave Songs of the U.S.

  • Amy Beach’s “Gaelic Symphony”

  • John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”

  • Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”

  • WC Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”

    This is the first blues song to succeed as a popular song and introduced the 12 bar blues that is standard.
  • Period: to

    Broadway’s First Golden Age

  • First Cajun music recording

  • Still’s “Afro American Symphony”

  • Kate Smith’s ‘God Bless America’

  • Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial

  • This Land is Your Land

  • “Cottontail” by Duke Ellington

  • Bluegrass first appears

  • We Shall Overcome

  • Period: to

    John Cage’s “Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano”

  • Folk Songs U.S.A.: The 111 best American ballads

  • Alan Freed coins the term “Rock n Roll”

  • Miles Davis releases Kind of Blue

  • “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys

  • Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles is released

  • Period: to

    Woodstock Festival

  • “Rapper’s Delight” by Sugarhill Gang

  • Run DMC and Aerosmith release their video for “Walk This Way”

  • John Adam’s “Nixon in China”

  • Period: to

    Broadway’s Second Golden Age

    We are currently in the Second Golden Age of Broadway musical theatre.