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Marvel said ".....at some point the chain was broken...."

I think that point was when radio and jukeboxes became more common. This really happened before the war. It ruined the pure sound that was around before. Just consider; Music was past along from person to person, band to band for all the years before. People would really learn a piece. You have to remeber that people didn't typically travel far in the old days, they stayed in their small world. They would only go to town on weekends, and maybe the little town may or may not have a radio. People could go for days or months at a time without hearing any outside music. There were countless hours, days, years, perfecting little bits of music, without any (or very little) outside influence and then it's recorded... The records capture that individualism that is not present in most anything that is post war.

The recording of music on cylinders and discs from around 1900 to the mid teens were still kinda expensive for most people. But, phonographs and records got around in the late teens to the early twenties. You see it wasn't until 1918 that the superhetrodyne receiver was invented that made it possible to receive a stable radio signal. So soon after that the record companies lost a lot in sales due to radio. I don't know for shure, but I imagine that the record companies reduced the price of records, and made phonographs cheaper, so they could compete with the radio broadcasters. So everybody could afford records and everybody with ears was influenced by the mid-twenties.

For example:(a fiction)
Just think of the guy or group that had gone to town to record their songs. They've been in the back woods, only heard radio a little bit on the weekly trips to town. They've heard records. A guy down the road has a record. They get to the studio, lay down some tracks, then the recording studio folks play some other music for them. The guy, or group, thinks I might ought to play more like that. They start listening to records and playing all that popular music. He/They all start sounding alike.

So what i'm trying to say, is that radio and recordings that we love so dearly was the ruination of the music that it recorded. The more people are influenced by different music, the more it all becomes homogenized.

But, I also think the break in the chain was dependant on how far away from the city you lived. The break was early for city musicians, (maybe as early as the late 1800s) it took a few years for it to filter to the back woods. Thankfully recording processes got better. But it was total by the time the war started, mainly due to radio,

I believe.