As the draft during World War II removed men from male-coded spaces and sent them off to swell the ranks of the US Military, women had a unique opportunity to engage in spaces that would have–and did–exclude women. Sherrie Tucker’s Swing Shift: “All Girl” Bands of the 1940s offers unique insight into a brief moment in “recent” history during which women were provided a de facto greater agency in challenging barriers placed by social and cultural constructs and ideas of gender contamination in music and among many cultural spaces in the domestic United States during World War II. Tucker’s book provides fascinating insight into the lives and stories of the “all-girl” bands (the subtitle having a story of transformation of its own throughout Tucker’s research). Additionally, her article “When the Subjects Won’t Come Out” asks probing questions about the nature of what isn’t said, what is implied, what is said outright that may not be repeated, and how to find meaning out of all of it.
Tucker broaches an interesting point in the sixth chapter of Swing Shift, when a band’s sound “was frequently described as ‘masculine’ by the women I interviewed, especially those who appreciated the band’s style. . . . considering the masculine norm in the jazz scene, it is understandable that even women musicians would consider feminine a pejorative description . . .”1 We see the jazz scene as gender-coded to the point that descriptions of “good” performances are inherently masculine. This leads to the consideration of present-day equivalents, especially with the intense social and cultural changes experienced inter- and post-COVID. As gender-coded spaces were forcibly evacuated for weeks, months, etc., what new norms and new spaces came to be?
The sheet music in the cover photo is John Cage’s 4’33”, published and allegedly performed (though there is no audio record of that performance) in 1952. 4’33” subverts the agency of the performer and the composer by focusing on the absence of traditional music, providing what may be the finest crystallization of the concept of reading between the lines. Although Cage’s work continues to receive derisive reviews from musicians and historians,2 the theme taken by Tucker in “When the Subjects Won’t Come Out” draws on similar ideas of the power and the meaning of silence.
I found the article remarkable in its dealing with the ethical dilemmas and pitfalls facing historians in the conduct of oral history. The theme of confirmation bias abounds throughout the article, culminating with an especially telling exchange between Tucker and her advisor. Tucker interviews two elderly women and, despite her best ethical efforts, cannot garner concrete evidence as to their sexuality. She relates the following story during a tour of their apartment.
“‘Now this is a sure sign of something,’ I say to myself, pretending to admire the paint in the second bedroom. ‘Either it is a sign that they are not lesbians but they know that I think they might be lesbians, or it is a sign that they are lesbians who are showing me their beds so that I will think they are not lesbians.'”3
After the interview, Tucker receives a check mailed by the interviewees for payment of a tape that Tucker gave to them. While Tucker promptly returns the check, she first alerts her advisor that she found a clear code for defining the interviewees’ sexuality: a joint checking account.4 Tucker realizes that she has not, in fact, found clear evidence, but the story goes to show the challenge in reading between the lines in an oral interview. I am consistently reminded of the knife-edge walked by historians as we interpret, reconstruct, and imagine and invent during our construction of the narrative. Too far to one side, and we have a history absent all-girl bands during the 1940s, let alone a history of sexuality in all-girl bands during the 1940s. Too far to the other side, and we create a narrative that misrepresents the past or devolves into historical fiction.
- Tucker, Sherrie. Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s. Duke University Press, 2000. pp. 290 ↩︎
- Ellenberg, Claude. “I Deride John Cage’s 4’33” as Both a Musician and a Historian: The Synthesis of Pretentiousness” Unpublished, 2025. ↩︎
- Tucker, Sherrie. “When the Subjects Won’t Come Out” in Queer Episodes in Modern History. University of Illinois Press, 2002. pp. 299. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎