ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates American popular music during World War II. It shows how swing bands and popular entertainers—including, among others, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, the Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra—provided a sonic anchor that simultaneously connected listeners to the recent past and yet firmly grounded them in the present. As a prewar musical style, swing music continued to shape popular culture well into the war, serving both as lively music for dancing and as music for aficionados. Swing and popular songs, too, coexisted in a new entertainment space called the “canteen,” where only morale-boosting music was allowed to be performed. Furthermore, reactions to two crooners—one an established performer and one an up-and-coming artist—demonstrate how musical preferences could diverge between those listeners deployed overseas and those who remained on the home front.
