In the 1930s, big bands and
swing music were popular, with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Glenn Miller popular bandleaders. In the 1930s, the bands
started to break up, and band singers like Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan went out on their own. War songs became popular.
Blues is a
Native American musical and verse form, with no direct European and African antecedents of which we know. The slaves sang
songs telling about their extreme suffering and poverty. The blues was mostly sung in the South and only spread northward
in the 1930s with the migration of many blacks from the South.