Swing era

There was a time, from 1933–1947, when teenagers and young adults danced to jazz-orientated bands. When jazz orchestras dominated pop charts and when influential clarinettists were household names. This was the swing era.

The swing era (also frequently referred to as the big band era) was the period (1933–1947) when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States, especially for teenagers. Though this was its most popular period, the music had actually been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, and Fletcher Henderson, and white bands from the 1920s led by the likes of Jean Goldkette, Russ Morgan and Isham Jones. An early milestone in the era was from "the King of Swing" Benny Goodman's performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. The 1930s also became the era of other great soloists: the tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young; the alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges; the drummers Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Jo Jones and Sid Catlett; the pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; the trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, and Rex Stewart.

Developments in dance orchestras and jazz music culminated in swing music during the early 1930s. It brought to fruition ideas originated with Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Jean Goldkette. The swing era also was precipitated by spicing up familiar commercial, popular material with a Harlem-oriented flavor and selling it via a white band for a white musical/commercial audience.[3] In Benny Goodman's band, the most diversified styles flowed together: the ensemble style developed by Fletcher Henderson, who arranged for Goodman; the riff technique of Kansas City; and the precision and training of many white musicians. On the other hand, the easy melodic quality and clean intonation of Goodman's band made it possible to "sell" jazz to a mass audience.[4]

The swing era brought to swing music Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and by 1938 Ella Fitzgerald. Armstrong, who had heavily influenced jazz as its greatest soloist in the 1920s when working with both small bands and larger ones, now appeared only with big swing bands. Other musicians who rose during this time include Jimmy Dorsey, his brother Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Goodman's future rival Artie Shaw, and Woody Herman, who departed the Isham Jones band in 1936 to start his own band. Several factors led to the demise of the swing era: the 1942–1944 musicians' strike from August 1942 to November 1944 (the union that most jazz musicians belonged to told its members not to record until the record companies agreed to pay them each time their music was played on the radio), the earlier ban of ASCAP songs from radio stations, World War II which made it harder for bands to travel around as well as the "cabaret tax", which was as high as 30%, the rise of vocalist-centered pop and R&B as the dominant forms of popular music, and the rising interest in bebop among jazz musicians. Though some big bands survived through the late 1940s (Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Stan Kenton, Boyd Raeburn, Woody Herman), most of their competitors were forced to disband, bringing the swing era to a close. Big-band jazz would experience a resurgence starting in the mid-1950s, but it would never attain the same popularity as it had during the swing era.

During the 1920s the older two-beat style of jazz was superseded by four-beat jazz, facilitated by replacement of the sousaphone with the string bass. Four beat rhythm was the foundation of the Chicago style jazz developed by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines, and of the swing era rhythmic styles. The change in rhythm started first with solo pianists and small ensembles, then larger ensembles towards the end of the decade. Toward the end of the twenties the two-beat styles seemed all but exhausted. First in Chicago, then in Harlem and Kansas City, a new way of playing developed around 1928–29. Chicago musicians migrating to Harlem brought their rhythmic ideas with them. As is so often the case in jazz, there are confusing exceptions to this general outline. Jimmie Lunceford's big band at the height of the swing era employed a beat that was simultaneously 2/4 and 4/4. The Bob Crosby Orchestra and the Lionel Hampton Orchestra also featured two-beat rhythms long after four-beat rhythm became the standard.

In May 1935, the No. 1 record in the country was Jimmie Lunceford's "Rhythm Is Our Business". Released a few months before Benny Goodman triggered the national craze known as swing, the song offered a foretaste of the coming deluge. "Rhythm is our business/ Rhythm is what we sell," Lunceford's singer declared: "Rhythm is our business / Business sure is swell."[7] If rhythm defined the swing bands, its foundation lay in the rhythm section: piano, guitar, bass, and drums.

In big bands, rhythm sections fused into a unified rhythmic front: supplying the beat and marking the harmonies. Each of the leading bands presented a distinct, well-designed rhythmic attack that complemented its particular style. The rhythm sections of Ellington, Basie, and Lunceford, for example, sounded nothing alike. Just as the soloists were champing at the bit of big-band constraints, rhythm players were developing techniques and ideas that demanded more attention than they usually received. In the 1930s, rhythm instruments made dramatic advances toward the foreground of jazz. In the process, they helped set the stage for bebop. In 1939, Duke Ellington discovered virtuoso young bassist Jimmie Blanton and hired him into his Orchestra. Blanton revolutionized the bass as a featured instrument in the band, until he left the band in late 1941 due to terminal tuberculosis.

Towards the end of the 1930s the roles of the piano, bass, and drums in the rhythm section changed significantly under the influence of the Count Basie Orchestra Early swing drumming relied heavily on the bass and snare drums, with a secondary role for the high hat cymbal in timekeeping. Jo Jones inverted that relationship, making the high hat the primary timekeeper and using the bass and snare drums for accents and lead-ins. Basie introduced a rhythmically sparse style of piano playing emphasizing accents, lead-ins, and fills. Both of those changes increased the importance of the bass and guitar in timekeeping, ably held by Walter Page and Freddie Green. The lighter and sparser, yet more dynamic, sense of rhythm expressed by the Basie rhythm section lent greater freedom for the band's soloists and set a trend that would culminate in the rhythmic ideas of bebop.