This Jazz Age tale takes you from the streets of South Philly and the Boardwalk of Atlantic City to the nightclubs, vaudeville palaces, pool halls, and recording and broadcast studios dotting Gotham. Our protagonists are two pioneers of jazz who brought something entirely novel and extraordinary to the centuries-long tradition of violin and guitar playing. Their work modernized this tradition, heralded chamber jazz, and helped shape the soundtrack of the dizzy decade.
Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang (born Salvatore Massaro) both hail from South Philadelphia’s Italian neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century. They became friends in their early teens despite living several blocks away from each other. Growing up in the tough environment of “The City of Brotherly Love,” they remained focused on classical training in solfege and violin. When the first jazz records started circulating in Philadelphia after the Great War, Venuti (b. 1903) and Massaro (b. 1902) were captivated by the new sounds and rhythms. Individually, they were on the same path of music discovery, and together, they ingeniously applied their knowledge of opera, classical music, and Italian music to popular music. The pair soon produced groundbreaking recordings in various settings, both intimate and orchestral, between 1926 and 1933.
The bond between Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang was a unique yin-yang dynamic built on t
