Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen

FAIN: FA-55004-10

Sherrie J. Tucker
University of Kansas, Lawrence (Lawrence, KS 66045-7505)

This timely oral history-based study examines memories of people who narrate competing national visions as they converged on the dance floor of the Hollywood Canteen, a celebrated nightclub where members of the guilds and unions of the motion picture industry entertained military personnel in Los Angeles during WWII. Based on archival research and interviews with approximately sixty Canteen-goers, this book builds on my previous work on swing, race, gender, and nation to explore historic and continuing struggles over social and political meanings of American democracy on one potent site of swing-culture-as-national-memory. In listening to the ways that war-time swing memory propels seductive narrations of nation as simultaneously populist and affluent; innocent and powerful; multicultural and white; this book also yields modes of hearing contradictions, negotiations, and critiques in the interplay of narratives from the less memorialized corners of the dance floor.

Media Coverage

New Books in Pop Music (podcast) (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Schur, Rich
Publication: The Pitch
Date: 1/19/2015
Abstract: The podcast explores the war, the racial politics of swing music, integration and race relations, oral history and how to write cultural history.
URL: http://newbooksinpopmusic.com/2015/01/19/sherrie-tucker-dance-floor-democracy-the-social-geography-of-memory-at-the-hollywood-canteen-duke-up-2014/

KU Professor’s Book Remembers and Demystifies Famous WWII USO Club (Media Coverage)
Author(s):
Publication: Kansas Public Radio - KPR
Date: 5/8/2015
Abstract: Interview
URL: http://kansaspublicradio.org/kpr-news/ku-professor%E2%80%99s-book-remembers-and-demystifies-famous-wwii-uso-club

Interview with Sherrie Tucker (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Jay Hammond, Karim Wissa
Publication: Full Stop
Date: 4/21/2015
Abstract: For Sherrie Tucker, research is dancing. A leading academic in the Jazz Studies world, she is part of a cohort of scholars working on gender, embodiment, memory, social improvisation, and dis/ability in jazz. Rather than creating a new subfield of inquiry though, these priorities demand new ways of talking about older themes in jazz scholarship such as race, democracy, war, nationalism, and, in Tucker’s recent work, stem from thinking critically with dance.
URL: http://www.full-stop.net/2015/04/21/interviews/jay-and-karim/sherrie-tucker/

Associated Products

Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen (Book)
Title: Dance Floor Democracy: The Social Geography of Memory at the Hollywood Canteen
Author: Sherrie Tucker
Abstract: Open from 1942 until 1945, the Hollywood Canteen was the most famous of the patriotic home front nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations. Since the opening night, when the crowds were so thick that Bette Davis had to enter through the bathroom window to give her welcome speech, the storied dance floor where movie stars danced with soldiers has been the subject of much U.S. nostalgia about the "Greatest Generation." Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the wartime nightclub, Sherrie Tucker explores how jitterbugging swing culture has come to represent the war in U.S. national memory. Yet her interviewees' varied experiences and recollections belie the possibility of any singular historical narrative. Some recall racism, sexism, and inequality on the nightclub's dance floor and in Los Angeles neighborhoods, dynamics at odds with the U.S. democratic, egalitarian ideals associated with the Hollywood Canteen and the "Good War" in popular culture narratives. For Tucker, swing dancing's torque—bodies sharing weight, velocity, and turning power without guaranteed outcomes—is an apt metaphor for the jostling narratives, different perspectives, unsteady memories, and quotidian acts that comprise social history.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Dance-Floor-Democracy/
Primary URL Description: Duke University Press
Secondary URL: https://www.scribd.com/document/238639309/Dance-Floor-Democracy-by-Sherrie-Tucker
Secondary URL Description: Excerpt on Scribd
Publisher: Duke University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780822376200
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Swing: from Time to Torque (Dance Floor Democracy at the Hollywood Canteen) (Article)
Title: Swing: from Time to Torque (Dance Floor Democracy at the Hollywood Canteen)
Author: Sherrie Tucker
Abstract: The Hollywood Canteen (1942–1945) was the most famous of the USO and USO-like patriotic nightclubs where civilian hostesses jitterbugged with enlisted men of the Allied Nations during World War II. It is also the subject of much U.S. national nostalgia about the “Good War” and “Greatest Generation.” Drawing from oral histories with civilian volunteers and military guests who danced at the Hollywood Canteen, this article focuses on the ways that interviewees navigated the forceful narrative terrain of national nostalgia, sometimes supporting it, sometimes pulling away from or pushing it in critical ways, and usually a little of each. This article posits a new interpretative method for analyzing struggles over “democracy” for jazz and swing studies through a focus on “torque” that brings together oral history, improvisation studies, and dance studies to bear on engaging interviewees' embodied narratives on ideologically loaded ground, improvising on the past in the present.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/DAED_a_00243#.U6m2QSj5dj4
Primary URL Description: MIT Press
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Daedalus
Publisher: American Academy of Arts & Sciences

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