the.com/jazz age
America got rich, got drunk, and got rhythm, in that order.
means The restless, boom-time decade of the 1920s when flappers, speakeasies, and hot jazz music signaled a break from older, stiffer social rules.
from 'Jazz' itself is the puzzle at the heart of this phrase — its origin is genuinely murky, with early 1900s American slang roots possibly tied to West African language influences or San Francisco baseball slang meaning 'pep' or 'liveliness,' before it attached to the music coming out of New Orleans. 'Jazz Age' as a label for the decade was popularized by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used it in essays and stories to name the era he was busy chronicling — pinning a word for music onto an entire generation's mood.
- time span
- roughly 1918 to 1929, war to crash
- coined by
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, who also overspent it
- soundtrack
- Black musicians invented it, white flappers monetized it
- ended by
- stock market, abruptly, mid-song