I
t took ten years for jazz to develop from an often disdained urban phenom-enon, played mostly by young male musicians for black audiences, into a national obsession that crossed geographical, generational, gender, and racial borders. Louis Armstrong inaugurated his Hot Five recordings in November 1925; Benny Goodman inadvertently launched the Swing Era in August 1935.In the decade that followed, jazz was used almost exclusively to describe tradi-tional New Orleans music. The new word was swing, which encompassed “hot”
orchestras, like those of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and “sweet” bands, like those of Sammy Kaye and Hal Kemp, which had virtually nothing to do with jazz. Many bands played both hot and sweet in attempting to create stylish dance music that combined elements of jazz with lush instrumentation and pop songs.
The swing bands revived a music industry considered moribund in the dark days of the Depression, and lifted the country’s spirits during the darker days of World War II. Even the Nazis, who spurned jazz as a symptom of American
de-Roy Eldridge, a terror on the trum-pet, respectfully known as Little Jazz or just plain Jazz, poses in front of the Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s.
Rosie the Riveter was a familiar symbol for feminine power during World War II.
The phenomenal popularity of Benny Goodman’s dance band launched the Swing Era. New York, 1937–38.
Mary Lou Williams, “the lady who swings the band,” was the chief arranger and pianist for Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy. Cleveland, 1937.
PAR T III
1920s
■ Territory dance bands proliferate across country.
1922
■ James Joyce’s Ulysses published.
■ T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland published.
1925
■ The Ku Klux Klan marches in Washington, D.C.
■ John Scopes convicted in Tennessee for teaching evolution.
■ F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby published.
■ Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time published.
1926
■ Savoy Ballroom opens in New York.
■ First national radio network (NBC).
1927
■ Charles Lindbergh fl ies solo across the Atlantic.
1928
■ Mickey Mouse makes fi rst screen appearance.
1929
■ St. Louis Blues, featuring Bessie Smith, released.
■ Stock market crashes, Great Depression begins.
■ William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury published.
1930s
■ Guitar replaces banjo, string bass replaces tuba in jazz bands.
■ Stride and boogie-woogie piano styles at their peak.
1930
■ George Gershwin composes “I Got Rhythm.”
■ Warner Bros. launches gangster fi lm cycle with Little Caesar.
1931
■ Cab Calloway records “Minnie the Moocher.”
■ Universal launches horror fi lm cycle with Frankenstein and Dracula.
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generacy, were forced to issue imitation swing records to attract listeners to their broadcasts in occupied countries. In the United States, swing created new styles in slang, dress, and especially dance—an energetic, athletic “jitterbugging” that kept ballrooms jumping from coast to coast. Millions of fans debated the merits of bands and knew the names of key soloists: in that era, jazz and pop were largely inseparable.
Yet there was more to swing than big bands and riotous dancing. A new virtuos-ity had taken hold—a technical bravura that advanced the harmonic and rhythmic underpinnings of jazz, spurring innovations that would last long after the Swing Era had faded. Jazz singing came into its own, the guitar found a new voice through electronic amplifi cation, and orchestrating became an art in its own right.
If jazz of the 1920s, created in times of plenty, illuminated a defi ant individual-ism, the Swing Era responded to years of hardship and war with a collective spirit that expressed a carefree, even blissful optimism.
1932
■ Duke Ellington records “It Don’t Mean a Thing (if It Ain’t Got That Swing).”
■ Unemployment in the U.S. reaches 14 million.
■ Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president.
1932–34
■ Louis Armstrong tours Europe.
1933
■ Billie Holiday makes fi rst recordings.
■ Ellington tours Europe.
■ Recording industry at nadir: only 4 million records sold.
■ Prohibition repealed.
■ Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.
1934
■ Fats Waller makes fi rst recordings.
■ Jimmie Lunceford band performs at the Cotton Club.
■ The Quintette du Hot Club de France (with Django Reinhardt) performs in Paris.
■ Ella Fitzgerald wins talent competition at the Apollo Theater in New York.
■ Le jazz hot, Down Beat founded.
■ Dust Bowl begins (lasting till 1939).
■ Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night released.
1935
■ Benny Goodman band, at the Palomar Ballroom in California, launches Swing Era; Goodman begins recording with integrated trio.
■ Billie Holiday records with top musicians, including Teddy Wilson.
■ Ella Fitzgerald records with Chick Webb.
■ George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess opens in New York.
■ Popular Front formed.
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The Original Blue Devils defi ned Kansas City jazz. Lester Young stands to the left and Buster Smith to the right of leader Alvin
Burroughs, 1932.
The most famous dance hall in America: the Savoy Ballroom on Lenox Avenue, Harlem, 1940.
The best dancers at the Savoy Ballroom could have doubled as acrobats.
PAR T III
1936
■ Count Basie takes band to New York.
■ Lester Young records “Oh! Lady Be Good.”
■ Gibson Company produces fi rst electric guitar.
■ Jazz clubs thrive on New York’s 52nd Street.
■ Jesse Owens wins four gold medals at Berlin Olympics.
■ Life magazine founded.
■ Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times released.
■ Fred Astaire / Ginger Rogers fi lm Swing Time released.
1936–39
■ Spanish Civil War
1937
■ Mary Lou Williams and Andy Kirk band in New York.
■ Count Basie band performs at Savoy, records “One O’Clock Jump.”
■ Hindenburg explodes in New Jersey.
■ Pablo Picasso paints Guernica.
■ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs released.
■ Oscar Hammerstein / Jerome Kern musical Show Boat opens in New York.
1938
■ Benny Goodman concert at Carnegie Hall (January).
■ “From Spirituals to Swing” concert at Carnegie Hall (December).
■ Ella Fitzgerald records “A-Tisket, a-Tasket.”
■ Billy Strayhorn joins Duke Ellington.
■ Germany annexes Austria.
■ Orson Welles’s radio broadcast “The War of the Worlds” creates national panic.
1939
■ Coleman Hawkins records “Body and Soul.”
■ Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit.”
■ Glenn Miller records “In the Mood.”
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■ Lester Young records “Lester Leaps In” with Count Basie.
■ Benny Goodman hires Charlie Christian.
■ World War II begins in Europe.
■ John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath published.
■ Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Young Mr.
Lincoln released.
1940
■ Cootie Williams leaves Duke Ellington’s band.
■ Ellington records “Concerto for Cootie,” “Conga Brava,” “Ko-Ko.”
■ Winston Churchill becomes prime minister of Britain.
■ The Blitz: bombing of England.
1941
■ Ellington records “Take the ‘A’ Train.”
■ Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, U.S. enters war.
■ Citizen Kane, The Maltese Falcon released.
1942
■ Glenn Miller forms Air Force band.
■ Bing Crosby records “White Christmas.”
1943
■ Ellington performs Black, Brown, and Beige at Carnegie Hall.
1944
■ Glenn Miller’s plane disappears over English Channel.
■ Allies invade Normandy, France (D-Day).
1945
■ U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; World War II ends.
■ Franklin D. Roosevelt dies, Harry S. Truman becomes president.
Ella Fitzgerald, “the fi rst lady of song,” brought the stars out, in-cluding Swedish clarinetist Stan Hasselgård (behind Ellington), Duke Ellington, Benny Good-man, and music publisher Jack Robbins. New York, 1949.
Fats Waller and His Rhythm (including saxophonist Gene Se-dric and trumpet player Herman Autrey) recording with the Deep River Boys at the RCA-Victor studios in New York, 1942.
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In the 1930s, jazz was known as swing. We call this period the Swing Era, to distin-guish it from the jazz of the 1920s. It was mostly big-band music, performed by large dance orchestras divided into sections of trumpets, saxophones, and trombones, as well as rhythm. Although swing was a new music to the casual consumer, it retained the basic elements of jazz we have already seen: polyrhythm, blues phrasing, timbre variation. And though it used written music more than previous forms of jazz, swing continued to bal-ance composition against spontaneous improvisation.
Th e size of the bands transformed dance music into an orchestral music, thus realizing some of the aspirations of symphonic jazz; but the style was not complex. Swing off ered a smooth, readily digestible sound, displacing the knotty polyphony of New Orleans jazz with clear homophonic textures, simple bluesy riff s, strong dance grooves, and well-defi ned melodies. It was a thoroughly commercial phenomenon. Like fi lm, radio, and popular song, swing was central to a nationwide system of mass entertainment.