Billy Murray & International Novelty Orch. - Monkey Biz-ness, 1925

International Novelty Orchestra (with Billy Murray) - Monkey-Biz-ness (Down In Tennessee), Victor 1925

This song refers to some mysterious Tennessee business in the Roaring Twenties - while the photographs show the Coney Island holidaying in the years 19oo-20. Nevertheless, this small imperfection in details should not disturb us in enjoying the happy-go-lucky Luna Park atmosphere of the slideshow, as well as the crazy music. I believe, they go together quite well.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Roaring
• 1920s
• Coney
• Island
• Luna
• Park
• American
• hot
• dance
• band
• 78rpm
• shellack
• vintage
• photographs

[Edisonc250]

Who would dominate American culture--the modernists or the traditionalists? Journalists were looking for a showdown, and they found one in a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925. There a jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution.

[JCJasion]

And the Culture Wars continue!

[fatsfan70]

What a healthy sign for 20's America that they could find fun and musical humour in such a sad business as the Scopes trial. I love this record and the pictures are the cat's whiskers too! Read somewhere they are going to tear down the original Tin Pan Alley.

[genia106]

Grzegorz...

"Bee's Knees" is a term indicating excellence-the highest quality. Because bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. The allusion is to the CONCENTRATED GOODNESS to be found around the bee's knee.

[barbcard]

My father always talked about the wonders of Luna Park, which burned down many years ago. Now the whole Coney Island amusement park is closed in preparation for the developers, who will build hi-rise condos and shopping malls, maybe preserve a couple of rides, like the famous roller coaster. Sic transit gloria mundi once again...

[genia106]

Monkey Biz-ness is FABULOUS and those Luna Park photos are the BEE'S KNEES! You have some collection, those photos are SUPER!

I thought Monkey Business meant that they sold monkey's in Tennessee. :-) (I know, I know..it is a VERY BAD JOKE) :-)))

[zenithbay]

Wonderful images...

[Edisonc250]

In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South. Who would dominate American culture--the modernists or the traditionalists?

[Edisonc250]

The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, debated abstract art and Freudian theories.