Syncopation Palls

Presented for your entertainment and edification, something I found on the editorial page of the Seattle Daily Times from January 5, 1926, just now:

Syncopation Palls.

The “oom-pah” and the syncopation of “jazz” have grown a trifle wearisome. That explains why the American public has turned, for a moment, from the blues of various brands to “Turkey in the Straw” and “Money Musk,” as played by the old-time “backwoods” fiddlers.

The reintroduction of these ancients to a world of “hip-flasks,” sophistication and “speed” is sufficiently incongruous to bring a wrinkle of amused surprise to the pallid brow of the traditionally philosophic “man in the street.”

It is as though America abruptly had decided to return to the era of the stage coach, the flowing linen “stock” and the powdered wig.

Yet it is not so surprising after all. Even a diet of peppers palls after a time. The appetite becomes as jaded through prolonged indulgence in highly-spiced foods as it does if choice is limited to simpler fare.

“Jazz” was new and remained new because of its successive changes in form over a period of many years. The final development is the lugubrious composition known as the “blues”—a form of musical expression which could not be expected to long retain its grip on a lively people such as ours.

Much the same progress has occurred in the modern dance steps. At first so simple that even grandfather and grandmother could “shake a wicked knee,” they have been complicated until we have the “Charleston,” an acrobatic specialty which even the young find too strenuous and exhausting for pleasure.

The old-time tunes are lively. They furnish good music for the waltz, which seems to have attained a new vogue. Above all else, they are new to this generation.

The wheel of change has turned again and momentarily brought back to a measure of popularity the airs and the steps of an earlier generation.