The soloists were supported with background riffs.
4. The rhythm section backs up all the others with a steady defined pulse.
It was also the era of the Arranger - in the words of Benny Goodman: “Up to that time [1934] the only kind of arrangements that the public had paid much attention to, so far as knowing who was responsible for them was concerned, were the elaborate ones such as Ferde Grofe’s for Whiteman. But the art of making an arrangement a band can play with swing - and I am convinced it is an art - one that really helps a solo player to get off, and gives him the right background to work against - that’s something very few musicians can do.”
And, it was also the age of the Soloist - one of the unusual aspects, as the large group and section work would seem to hide the players within the ensemble. As Joachim Berendt mentions: “the thirties also became the era of great soloists: the tenor saxists Coleman Hawkins and Chu Berry; the clarinetist Benny Goodman; the drummers Gene Krupa, Cozy Cole, and Sid Catlett; the pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; the alto saxist Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges; the trumpeters Roy Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, and Rex Stewart.”
If any one lived the history of the era it was Benny Goodman and his emergence as the King Of Swing is a chronicle of the era. Although there were two pioneering bands before Goodman - the Dorsey Brothers and the Casa Loma Band - they did not hit the right combination of musical elements to impact the way Goodman did. The Goodman Band actually replaced the Casa Loma unit on the Camel Caravan radio show in 1936 and Sterns states that the Goodman story is how “many qualities suddenly jelled in one band to produce a blend of enormous appeal”.
Goodman was born in 1908 and came to New York with the Ben Pollack Band - which had both Goodman and Jack Teagarden as soloists - in 1928. This unit functioned till the Depression hit and Goodman survived doing Club Dates and radio programs with the commercial orchestras. He met John Hammond in 1933 and Hammond worked out a session for the English Gramophone Company.
Usually, the record companies of the period insisted on very conservative and commercial material - what was already selling [seems things haven’t changed much]. Goodman himself had recorded in 1928 and on the recording had mimicked Ted Lewis who was sufficiently impressed to hire Goodman - a job which got him through the Depression.
The Hammond date was different. First, he insisted on special arrangements and as such it was a hit in England. When the US companies picked up on the recording Hammond successfully defended against a coupling of each side with a sweet commercial number. This recording of Shirt Tail Stomp [Brun 3975] enabled Goodman to make a series of recordings for Columbia - at a new low of $100 per side [still the days of 78’s]. One of the developments of these Columbia dates was the increasing employment of Black musicians by Goodman - Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins, and Mildred Bailey.
Goodman finally broke the precedent against mixed bands when he hired Teddy Wilson at the Hotel Congress in Chicago. He readily admits John Hammond’s influence in this - against the strong social conventions and prejudices of the period.
By 1934, Goodman had his own band and a below scale job at Billy Rose’s Music Hall - then the Big Break.
The National Biscuit Company was ready to launch its new Ritz cracker and had settled on using the radio to advertise. They supported the ‘Let’s Dance’ radio show with three bands - Xavier Cougat, Kel Murray, and Benny Goodman. The Company financed 8 new arrangements for Goodman - who purchased them from Fletcher Henderson. The small but devoted following that developed through the program brought the Goodman Band to the attention of MCA [Music Corporation of America]. Willard Alexander at the agency was the one who persuaded MCA - much to Benny Goodman Goodman Band annoyance of most of MCA - to book the band. They were placed in the Hotel Roosevelt in NYC [the home of Guy Lombardo] - the band was not a success. Alexander in desperation arranged a tour of mostly one night stands culminating on the West Coast. This too, was not very successful for Goodman - although he switched to ‘sweet’ dance band arrangements to get through the tour.
At the Polomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, the band had become desperate. Moral was low and its continued existence was questionable. Goodman took the plunge: “If we had to flop, at least I’d do it in my own way, playing the kind of music I wanted to…I called out some of our big Fletcher arrangements for the next set…the first big roar from the crowd was one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard in my life.”
The Swing Era was born the night of August 21, 1935.
The swing era lasted just ten years - from l935 to 1945. In researching this article, I realized when the Swing Era ended, it also marked the end of Jazz as a Dance and a Popular music. It also marked a change in the culture of this country. What went before was never to be again - the society that created the music from New Orleans Dixieland through this era had changed for good. I personally feel that World War II created such an accelerated pace of change - technologically and socially - that the post war years do not relate to that immediate past. That past time had been destroyed by the immense social disruption which accompanied the War itself - but, it was the foundation (good or bad) for who we are today. As such, my orientation for this period is both the culmination of fifty years of musical evolution and as a transition to the “modern” - a new way of viewing the world and a new way of viewing Jazz.
Swing Music made big money - the trend toward larger groups was stimulated by this ability. I looked through the Keepnew’s Pictorial History of Jazz and came across an amazing photo. It was a picture of the marquee of the Strand theater in New York City and Artie Shaw’s band was to play at this venue.
His name is displayed in lights - a dominating presence in size and wattage. On the marquee itself, his band is given equal billing with the movie - Wings of the Navy. It was so strange for me to see this - only rock stars got that kind of exposure! But then I realized there was no difference between the Shaw date and any high profile popular music of today - they were immensely popular and immensely lucrative. The bottom line was this similarity. But then, slipping back into my present day orientation the strangeness returned - it did not ‘fit’ my view of what Jazz is. That Artie Shaw picture indicated to me that the very functionality of the music itself - and the percentage of Art perception associated with it is radically different in our times.
Jazz up to the advent of Bebop was a dance music. Its function was to provide musical accompaniment for dancing - in venues designed for dancing. Its very development was a striving to fill larger and larger spaces which existed to fill the social need for dance entertainment. Swing did this better than anything that had come before - but it was the final music whose function was social. Bop changed the artistic percentage - its focus turned inward, centering on the musical elements and the expressive abilities of the individual artist in manipulating those elements. The audience was left to participate only as consumers of art, not participants.
This change in orientation would have profound effects on the future course of Jazz. The most immediate effect was a narrowed audience - one which was capable of following complex and abstract musical expression. Those who wished to dance either did not embrace the new music or sought out alternatives. This accelerated as the following generations explored new alternatives which provided that dancing function. Within the genre itself, the musician increasingly viewed himself as an artist - and artists are not motivated by audience share but rather by standing in the artistic community. The music increasingly feedback on itself - as any ‘pure’ art will and ultimately created an audience of musicians and cognoscenti - it relegated itself to an artistic niche. What Paul Whiteman wanted so many years before - acceptance by the musically knowledgeable had come to pass. Now, it shared the same fate as the art music of the concert halclass="underline" an audience that viewed it as art, created by artists, and to be judged only on its artistic elements. It had effectively pulled back from any hope of again being a Popular Music.