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Oregon Festival of American Music 2015: "swanee" at Oregon Festival of American Music at John G Shedd Institute for the Arts

Courtesy of Saleah | Posted on May 20, 2015

When

Wed, August 12, 2015
1:30 pm

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Musicians

About

In October 24, 1881 Bowery theatre manager and devoted family man Tony Pastor opened at the Fourteenth Street Theater what he claimed to be the first "clean" variety show in New York City on the hunch that a vastly broader audience could be reached by banning liquor at his shows and making the lyrics respectable. He was right, as many other impresarios were discovering, and over the next decade a new form of variety, called "vaudeville" exploded across the country, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities. The key to its genius (a guiding principle it shared with Tin Pan Alley) was its commitment to reaching middle America. As Groucho Marx often quipped, "If it plays in Peoria, it will play anywhere." And that's exactly what vaudeville wanted to do!...

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