I was reading/thinking about the decline of big band and swing (in the US) recently. Of course, it didn’t happen all at once and had various causes (or, at least, I’ve seen debate on various causes). Mine is not about the rise of rock and roll, but rather earlier the rising dominance of vocal-focused pop (which, again, I full acknowledge existed and had popular works during the swing era). And, of course, I know there was also doo wop and some latin-inspired songs, too.
So, for music historians (or marketing historians), do you know if there was age-segmentation of what was listened to among adults in the latter half of the 1940s and early 1950s? Did 23 year old listen to the same music as 43 year olds? I expect their were some racial and ethnic and urban-vs-rural differences, as well. My understanding was jazz was mostly in the bebop era at the time, which was more “musician’s music” or at least for listening, rather than dancing. Which I would think would lessen it’s appeal. Not quite certain on when the era of samba dancing was. But my main interest is in to what degree there were age-based differences within racial/ethnic/regional groups.
