# The Best Jazz Bandleaders Of All Time: Photos, Video, Sounds

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2017/10/22/the-best-jazz-bandleaders-of-all-time-photos-video-sounds/
- Published: 2017-10-22T01:11:20+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Though the golden age of big band music is associated with the 30s, it originated
a decade earlier, in the Jazz Age, when large groups emerged out of small jazz combos,
swelling in size and musical ambition. In the Roaring 20s, the burgeoning record
industry attracted musicians to big American cities, and new bands such as McKinney’s
Cotton Pickers could have strings of bestselling hits.**

Fletcher Henderson was a major force in establishing big band music, with accomplished
ensembles that included musicians of the quality of Louis Armstrong, saxophonists
Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter, and clarinettist Buster Bailey. In Henderson’s
music lay many of the origins of “swing”, and it is no coincidence that he was later
to work as an arranger for the King Of Swing, Benny Goodman. Henderson’s bands were
pioneers in getting harmonised arrangements to work for large groups of musicians.
Even Armstrong, whose work with his Hot Five and Hot Seven Bands had been so innovative
in the 20s, began working with an orchestra, producing his own marvellous big band
music.

Fletcher Henderson helped establish big band music in the 20s

In the immediate aftermath of the 1929 Wall Street Crash, big bands felt the effects
of the Great Depression, with even Henderson forced to disband temporarily. Ballroom
dancers had also tired of the rigours of frenetic jazz dancing and came to favour
the more sentimental music sung on radio shows by crooners such as Bing Crosby. 
Even superb musicians the likes of Benny Carter and Hawkins went to Europe to find
work with radio orchestras.

But as America came out of the Depression, the public wanted musical entertainment;
the big band era was about to begin. This coincided with a feeling, in jazz circles,
that bigger was better. The height of the swing era was between the years 1935 to
1940, and many bandleaders enjoyed huge success, none more so than Goodman, a dazzling
clarinet player.

The King Of Swing: clarinetist Benny Goodman

It was also a time when radio audiences were at their peak and stations needed fresh
music to help fill their schedules. Goodman was quick off the mark: his broadcasts
on _Camel Caravan_, a programme sponsored by a tobacco company, brought him legions
of new fans – many of whom saw him live. At one time, Goodman was playing five shows
every evening, to 21,000 people a night, and his band was rivalled in popularity
only by clarinettist Artie Shaw, who scored such a hit with ‘Begin The Beguine’.

Goodman also realised that he would need exciting arrangements that were challenging
enough to keep his good musicians stimulated, and the bandleader was also ahead 
of time in race relations, bringing black musicians, such as piano maestro Teddy
Wilson, into his group.

The big band phenomena also took jazz into new venues, such as Carnegie Hall, which
had previously been a preserve of classical music. And ballrooms across America 
were the hotbeds of new dance crazes such as the jitterbug and the jive. Swing bands
were big business, and if you found the right song you could have a million-seller
on your hands. Tommy Dorsey (trombone and trumpet) had a string of hits, including‘
Marie’ in 1937, while brother Jimmy (trumpet and clarinet) had his own runaway winners,
including ‘Amapola’.

Tommy Dorsey with his orchestra in 1941

Goodman’s success also inspired many of his sidemen – including drummer Gene Krupa,
trumpeters Harry James and Bunny Berigan, talented multi-instrumentalist Lionel 
Hampton and reed player Woody Herman – to create their own big bands. However, Berigan,
who had a drinking problem, was less successful than James. For James, it was large
concert halls and million-selling hits such as ‘You Made Me Love You’. For Berigan,
it was bankruptcy.

Running a big band was a tricky exercise in financial astuteness and man-management,
as well as a test of musical prowess. The bandleader was responsible for paying 
for arrangements, the band bus, uniforms, agency fees and publicity costs. And bands
weren’t always harmonious off stage. Composer and bandleader Hoagy Carmichael once
described life in a big band as being “like an inmate in a traveling zoo”.

As well as white bandleaders such as Goodman and Krupa, the 30s saw the rise of 
black bandleaders, including Chick Webb, whose group played regular residencies 
at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, with a young Ella Fitzgerald. It was a collaboration
that brought the massive hit ‘A-Tisket, A-Tisket’.

Cool for scats: Cab Calloway had the right personality to work a crowd

There were also notable bands led by Earl Hines and Cab Calloway. However, the most
important black bands to emerge were those of William “Count” Basieand Duke Ellington’s
marvellous orchestras. Basie had wonderful musicians in his band, which had originated
in Kansas, including bassist Walter Page and tenor saxophonist Lester Young, and
he brought in top-calibre vocalists, among them Jimmy Rushing and Billie Holiday.
Ellington, the man who had composed ‘It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That 
Swing’ in 1932, also had wonderful sidemen, such as bassist Jimmy Blanton.

Basie and Ellington’s bands produced some of the best and most exciting jazz that
had ever been made, and Basie’s superb driving rhythm section seemed to have an 
almost telepathic understanding, improvising on tunes which did not always have 
written arrangements.

Sir Duke said it best: it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing

Even within big bands, however, individuals could impose their own creative brilliance
as a soloist, as Coleman Hawkins did with his 1939 recording for Victor Records,‘
Body And Soul’. This hit was arranged for an orchestra but was essentially Hawkins’
own majestic tour de force.

Big band music continued to dominate the airwaves during the years of World War 
Two, when the music of Glenn Miller captivated the public. Though not a noted improviser,
Miller was a fine trombonist and superb arranger, and, by smoothing out the big 
band sound and adapting the songs to popular dance rhythms, he had huge success 
with tunes such as ‘In The Mood’ and ‘Moonlight Serenade’.

By the end of the war, jazz was moving in new experimental ways. Trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie had his own band of 15 musicians for a time, but he abandoned the big 
band format, believing that it was not right for the future direction of his creativity.
He was one of a number of musicians who led the bebop wave in the 50s. Perhaps sensing
a threat, some of the older big bandleaders, particularly Goodman and Tommy Dorsey,
criticised this new style of jazz.

Even pioneering bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie had a spell fronting a big band

Some bandleaders tried to be more forward-thinking. Woody Herman continued leading
big bands in the 50s but he employed young talented musicians such as Stan Getz 
and Zoot Sims, and allowed them to express the new sounds in their solos. Claude
Thornhill began using the “modern” arrangements penned by Gil Evans for a reinvented
big band that included bop musicians such as alto saxophonist Lee Konitz.

In the 40s, Tommy Dorsey gave Frank Sinatra one of his earliest breaks

In a similar way, Billy Eckstine’s band employed Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.
There were also moves to use vocalists with big bands, as Eckstone did with the 
honey-voiced Sarah Vaughan, a singer who had learned her trade with bandleaders 
such as Earl Hines. One celebrated singer who also earned his chops with big bands
was Frank Sinatra, who admitted that his path to solo success was helped enormously
by his time spent singing with the swing bands of Harry James and Tommy Dorsey in
the early 40s.

Another singer who cut her teeth with big bands was Peggy Lee. Born Norma Delores
Egstrom, she started with the swing bands of Jack Wardlaw and Will Osborne, and 
gained her real break in 1941 when she replaced Helen Forrest as Benny Goodman’s
vocalist. Under his watchful eye, she honed her technique. In the electric microphone
era, Lee was able to command even a searing big band with delicate inflections. 
Like Sinatra, she went on to have a dazzling solo career even as the appeal of the
big bands faded and rock and pop music took over.

As rock’n’roll engulfed all in the 60s, the big bands led by Stan Kenton, Woody 
Herman, Count Basie and Duke Ellington were virtually the only ones of a bygone 
era who continued to flourish, often keeping afloat with lucrative world tours. 
But even the titans struggled. Basie started working with a sextet and Ellington
had to use royalties from his compositions to fund his big band work. As Ellington
joked: “There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick,
and the gimmick I use is to pay them money.”

The past half-century has seen big bands endure ups and down. The one formed by 
ex-Basie trumpeter and conductor Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis went down a storm
and continued to set the standard in the 60s and 70s, when musicians such as Walter
Ferguson also flew the flag for the format.

Virtuoso bassist Christian McBride keeps the big bang sound alive in the 21st Century

Smooth jazz dominated the 80s, but there was still good and bold big band music 
being recorded in the 90s, including the 1993 live album _Dave Grusin Presents GRP
All-Star Big Band Live!, _by GRP Records co-founder Dave Grusin. The term “New Big
Band” was coined to refer to the groups that fuse elements of classic swing with
the bop artists. Among the most successful of those have been Christian McBride,
who won a Grammy in 2012 for best large jazz ensemble recording. That came just 
a year after Bob Curnow, a respected composer and producer, released the second 
volume of his big band arrangements of the music of Pat Metheny. The follow-up to
1994’s _The Music Of Pat Metheny And Lyle Mays_ showcased the very best in contemporary
big band writing.

Big band and swing music will always find an audience (just ask Robbie Williams,
whose two swing tribute albums this century have sold more than 10 million copies)
as music lovers go back to the greats, such as Basie and Ellington, who created 
some of the most uplifting music of modern times.

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