Vaudeville was a type of American entertainment from 1870 to 1920. By 1880, half of the population had moved from rural farm areas to towns and cities, joining The Industrial Revolution. These new urbanites had something new to experience-spare cash and leisure time. Along came Vaudeville, live shows with clean entertainment for family audiences. Vaudeville included animal acts, acrobats, female impersonators, comedians, jugglers, musicians, singers, dancers and comics. Vaudeville united people of all social and economic classes. Entertainers like Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, Abbott & Costello, as well as George Burns and Gracie Allen, got started in Vaudeville. If Vaudeville was so good, why did it end? Answer-a new form of entertainment, movies, came along and replaced Vaudeville. Since the 1920s, weve been through the Big Band era and old time rocknroll. They've come and gone. How do you avoid becoming obsolete in a fast-changing world-a world of globalism, worldwide Internet communications, rising self-employment, increasing entrepreneurism, new technologies like nanotech, and the startling decline and/or disappearance of many large American corporations and the jobs they'provided? Tony Bennetts career provides answers. Born in 1926, he continues to be hip and popular as a singer and painter. Why wasnt Tony discarded into the junkyard of cultural change? Two reasons: First, hes worked successfully with an array of diverse and successful people in the entertainment business--Bob Hope, Pearl Bailey, Mitch Miller, and Count Basie-who helped him along the way. He knows how to develop mutually-beneficial relationships with successful people--a great skill in any business or career. Second, for a time, his career did go into a painful decline. He suffered broken homes, tax troubles, drug problems, self doubt and career rejection. But his son, Danny, a rock musician, was hired as Tonys manager. Danny decided to reinvent his Dad for younger audiences. It worked. Says Danny, We didnt make it cool to be Tony Bennett. We put him in places where it was cool to be. Tony Bennett has appealed to younger audiences by appearing on The Simpsons and David Letterman. He performed with k.d.lang, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King and the late Ray Charles. He stays with it. Tony won his 11th Grammy in 2003. His 80th birthday is in 2006. Hes not retired and he isn't even close to it. How do we prevent ourselves from becoming obsolete dinosaurs, living painfully in the past in a world which no longer exists? We have to stay with it, toodaily! We have to show up where it's cool to be. This may involve reinventing ourselves--a little or a lot--as Tony Bennett did. We must take advantage of globalism, the rise of self-employment, and the downfall of large American corporations, as examples. We must use the new ways to get our messages out-product sales on our websites, blogs, webinars, teleconferencing, and e-book publishing, to name a few. Our messages cannot be a goulash of recycled, repackaged, stale ideas which thrilled listeners years ago. Rather, our communications must show how to ride the tidal wave of radical 21st Century cultural, societal and business change successfully. We must offer clarity, hope, innovation, answers to peoples concerns--expressed emotionally to the heart and rationally to the head simultaneously. If we do these things, we will not be tossed into the junkyard of cultural change, either. |
