History

Characterised by its swinging rhythms and room-filling orchestrations, Big Band music grew out of Dixieland and Hot Jazz, styles which had spread in the 1910s and 20s from New Orleans northwards to Chicago and New York through the immense popular appeal of bands such as The Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars. Its songs and instrumentals are some of the best known and most widely loved of the Twentieth Century and their popularity endures today.

Some date the beginning of Big Band to 1924, when trumpeter and scat vocalist Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in a residency at the Roseland Ballroom in New York, having recently relocated there from the Club Alabam on Broadway. Influenced by Armstrong’s imaginativeness and forward-moving swing style, the rest of Henderson’s orchestra developed a distinctive style of their own, making a massive impact on other jazz and dance bands of the era.

Don Redman’s ground-breaking arrangements for the orchestra helped refine a unique Big Band style with a heavy use of lively solos and creative employment of the interaction between different sections of the Orchestra, with one section responding to the other in a call and response style. Although Armstrong left Henderson’s band in 1925, the style they had created together in such a short space of time caught on and set the standard for other important bandleaders.

January 16th 1938 saw Big Band hit the big time, with a legendary performance by Benny Goodman and his 15-strong orchestra at the world-famous Carnegie Hall in New York. This is the moment that jazz moved from underground clubs and dancehalls and into major bastions of European culture. Members of many of the major big bands of the moment including Duke Ellington’s, joined Goodman’s band for the evening for a set list that included brand new numbers such as ‘Sometimes I’m Happy’ and ‘One O’Clock Jump’ as well as a potted history of Dixieland Jazz classics.

Some of the most legendary and dramatic evenings of the Big Band era occurred at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, in a series of “Battle of the Bands” contests. In 1937, Goodman challenged the Savoy’s regular band led by Chick Webb to a sound clash. The ensuing contest resulted in an electrifying and energetic evening with each band trying to top the other for musicianship and hot rhythms. Chick Webb was crowned the winner of that evening, but less than six months later, Webb was challenged again, this time by legendary pianist Count Basie, whose band was known for being “so hot they’d set the Roseland on fire”. The clash was even more frenzied than Goodman’s a year earlier, resulting in great controversy over who finally emerged victorious, with the judges voting Webb but the dancers voting Basie with their feet!

When many people think Big Band they think Count Basie! His orchestras were infinitely versatile and exciting, bringing a booming pomp and swagger to every record and every performance. High profile (and delightful!) collaborations with vocalists such as Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughn, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra ensured Basie’s Orchestra kept swinging throughout the 60s and 70s. However, it was a collaboration with the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, that really saw Basie make the most of a singer’s golden voice on the 1963 album Ella and Basie! With arrangements by a youthful Quincy Jones, this album features wonderful numbers such as Tea For Two, Honeysuckle Rose, Shiny Stockings and On the Sunny Side of the Street.

One of the all-time legends of the Big Band Era thanks to the 1954 Hollywood biopic based on his life, Glenn Miller led the most commercially successful Big Band of the 1930s, with a string of successful hits that continue to prove enduringly popular today: ‘Moonlight Serenade’, ‘The Nearness of You’ and ‘Chatanooga Choo Choo’. The secret to Miller’s success was a strong perfectionist ethos and a disciplinarian approach through which he strived to achieve a flawless musical style. In 1942, his fame riding high, Miller made the courageous decision to join the war effort, forming the Army Air Force Band and taking it to troop stations in Europe. In 1944, Miller disappeared when a plane taking him from London to Paris went down. After the war, the Glenn Miller Orchestra was reformed under a changing list of bandleaders and continues to perform today.

In the 1930s, while still only a teenager, Nathaniel Coles began performing piano in groups in Chicago, gradually earning the nickname that would make him famous, Nat “King” Cole, because of its proximity to the nursery rhyme “Old King Cole”. Although not initially a vocalist, Cole gradually started to introduce vocal performances between his instrumentals and it was with the sublime smoothness of his baritone voice that Nat “King” Cole charmed his way into music history throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, recording definitive Big Band renditions of classics such as ‘Dream a Little Dream’, ‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’ and ‘When I Fall in Love’. In 1956, Nat “King” Cole became the first African American to host a talk show on NBC-TV.

Big Band found its way into the music history books yet again through one of the best known Big Band classics: Woody Herman’s performance of the Louis Jordan hit ‘Caldonia’. At the same time as Herman’s version was riding high at # 2 in the pop charts, Erskine Hawkins released an R&B version which became the first song to be described as “Rock and Roll” in print, in the April 1945 issue of Billboard Magazine.

In 1953, the best-known English bandleader, Sir John Dankworth, formed his first Big Band inspired by his idol, the saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker. Praised for their smooth and flowing rhythm, they soon started performing at the influential Birdland club in New York and appearing regularly alongside the Duke Ellington Orchestra. One of his most famous compositions is his tongue in cheek ‘Experiments with Mice’, a short history of jazz with jazzy variations of the nursery rhyme theme ‘Three Blind Mice’ in the background.

In 1968, two legendary music artists collaborated on an album that would become a classic of jazz history: Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington’s ‘Francis A. and Edward K.’ A remarkable fusion of Sinatra’s impressive vocal and his pure pop music mastery with Duke Ellington’s genius for swing and rhythm. A stand-out track from that album is the relentlessly breezy track ‘Sunny’, written by Bobby Hebb to dispel his dark mood the day after the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.

Fast forward to the Twenty First Century and the popularity of Big Band music continues to endure. Through passionate and innovative recordings of classics such as ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ by inspirational performers such as Michael Bublé and Andy Abraham, the public has been able to reconnect with the swinging rhythms and smooth vocal performances that had never really left its heart.