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Big Band, jazz orchestra of at least 15 players, a grouping that developed in the 1920s and flourished until the 1940s. The origins of the jazz-influenced dance orchestra are found in World War I, and in 1919 Paul Whiteman assembled the most successful of the early bands. These differed from earlier jazz bands both in size (traditional New Orleans jazz was traditionally played by groups of four or five) and in that the music was based on written arrangements, with carefully placed “spaces” for the solo stars to improvise, rather than the continuous group improvisation of classic New Orleans jazz. Whiteman’s music was light, and tailored to the tastes of a mainly white audience—his band gave the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue (1924) by George Gershwin. During the 1920s, however, Duke Ellington (beginning with a ten-piece band that quickly expanded) greatly increased the range and sophistication of band orchestration, while Fletcher Henderson—influenced by working with pioneer jazzman Louis Armstrong—laid down the ground rules for swing, the term newly applied to the smooth-flowing, rhythmic arrangements favored by the bands. Cab Calloway added exuberant scat singing and virtuosic soloists (his band included Dizzie Gillespie and Ben Webster) to the mix. But the racial climate in the United States at that time meant that white orchestras had access to a wider market, and so the “big band era” really began commercially when Benny Goodman, from 1935, achieved nationwide success with Henderson-based music.
A typical band would combine brass (trumpets and trombones), reeds (saxophones and clarinets), and rhythm sections (drums, bass, guitar, and piano). The jazz roots of the music were reflected in the fact that many 1930s orchestras contained smaller units, for example the Bob Cats within Bob Crosby’s band, the Clambake Seven in the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, and Woody’s Woodchoppers in the Woody Herman band. By 1940 Glenn Miller and his orchestra was the most popular group, playing distinctive, disciplined arrangements, and star musicians from within the orchestras were beginning to form rival outfits—Harry James, for instance, left Goodman and soon discovered Frank Sinatra. Once the United States entered World War II, however, the end of the big band was in sight. Petrol rationing made travel increasingly difficult, dance halls closed, and shellac was diverted from record manufacturing to the war effort. Once the war was over, musical fashion began to move on towards the solo star and the small group, and in the mid-1950s rock and roll dealt the big band its final blow, According to Encarta. James Last, Mantavani, Lawrence Welk is only in your Imaginations.
ENJOY; and fuk the American RIAA!
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