Vaudeville

Vaudeville music is the popular song repertoire of the American variety stage, which flourished from the 1880s to the early 1930s. A vaudeville bill mixed singers, dancers, comics and novelty acts, and its music ranged across comic songs, sentimental ballads, ragtime numbers, dialect songs and early jazz, much of it written by Tin Pan Alley professionals and sold as sheet music. Performers such as *Sophie Tucker*, *Al Jolson* and *Eddie Cantor* became recording stars through the new medium, and vaudeville's song forms, stage patter and novelty traditions fed directly into musical theatre, radio and the American popular song mainstream.