In hard times, people need entertainment. Jazz, the blues, country, stomp and swing burst onto the national scene. ASCAP members Louis Armstrong, Gene Autry, Jelly Roll Morton, Jimmie Rodgers, Fats Waller and Bob Wills and were early pioneers of this new musical terrain.
The movies soared to unparalleled popularity too. Harold Arlen, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter and Jule Styne joined the ranks of ASCAP greats, along with Morton Gould, who went on to serve as President of ASCAP from 1986 to 1994, and William Grant Still, known as the "dean" of African-American composers.
As tensions in Europe mounted under Hitler's shadow, a new wave of expatriate composers migrated to Hollywood. Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Max Steiner and Franz Waxman reinvented the music of the movies with their lush, classicallyannotated scores.
And the tradition continued with ASCAP composers Elmer Berstein, Bill Conti, Ernest Gold, Maurice Jarre, Henry Mancini, Ennio Morriconi, Alex North, David Raksin and Miklos Rozsa. In recent years, ASCAP has wowed them at the Oscars with honors going to John Corigliano, Tan Dun, Elliot Goldenthal, James Horner, Randy Newman, Howard Shore and Hans Zimmer.
Into the 1940s >>>