The early years

Music coverage was scarce in the first decades of The Denver Post, and for good reason: Much of the paper’s real estate was dedicated to public safety due to the Spanish-american War in the late 19th century and the impending specter of World War I in the proceeding decades. The paper’s spare space was devoted to sensational stories of murder and marriage. “She Didn’t Raise Her Boy To Be A Husband At 20,” a headline from 1917 reads.

When the paper did cover music, it was brief, and discussed in the vague way an adult today might write about go-karts, or some other niche interest. (In a sense, it was: Sheet music was the only real means of a shared medium for popular music.) Its mentions were first organized in a column called “Amusements” — renamed “All The World’s A Stage” in the ’20s — which compiled the area’s vaudeville performances, plays, film screenings and the odd music recital.

In a footnote reminiscent of its current coverage of the Underground Music Showcase, The Post sometimes wrote to promote concerts of its own making. In May 1923, it organized a week of free concerts in an “endeavor to satisfy that public demand for jazz.”

Recaps of vaudeville performances — variety shows that often featured musical acts — are the closest the paper got to anything resembling a music review. An evaluation of the Orpheum Theatre’s (1513 Welton St.) 1917 showing of “Rubeville,” which

The golden age

Though music was by no means absent through the first half of the 20th century — the era saw the birth of jazz, including a local star born in big band legend Glenn Miller — coverage of artists and concerts as we know it didn’t arise until the 1960s.

The Post’s pop music coverage, for example, didn’t spring up until 1969, about a month before the moon landing.

Denver was, like many other American cities, roiling with civil unrest. The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War had inspired a generation of tiedyed political firebrands prone to protest.