Rhythm Clubs, record series, and the everyday connoisseurship of ‘hot rhythm’ records in interwar Britain

Abstract

The Rhythm Club movement was a crucial development in British jazz history: it galvanized an emerging audience of primarily lower-middle-class young men, who dramatically reshaped how jazz was understood and consumed. Using contemporary press clippings, as well as archive material relating to the earliest Rhythm Club meetings, I examine how participants developed a unique form of 'everyday connoisseurship' that merged ideals of autonomous 'art' culture with a critical vocabulary that was informed by more quotidian elements of musical consumption and leisure activity. My account of hot rhythm appreciation seeks to nuance existing popular narratives of early jazz record consumption that overemphasize enthusiasts' isolation from a putatively authentic jazz performance culture.

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