The Jazz music of the Big Band Era was the culmination of over thirty years of musical development. What is it that made Jazz so innovative and different that it could literally sweep the world, changing the musical styles of nearly every country? And what is it about big band Jazz that makes the feet tap and the heart race with excitement?
African Music and Ragtime
The musical and cultural revolution that brought about Jazz was a direct result of African-Americans pursuing careers in the arts following the American Civil War. As slaves, African-Americans had learned few European cultural traditions. With increased freedom to pursue careers in the arts and bringing African artistic traditions to their work, African-Americans changed music and dance, not only in the U.S., but all over the world. For after the war, African-American dancers and musicians were able to create work that was not hidebound by hundreds of years of musical and dance traditions brought from the courts and peasant villages of Europe.
What was the European tradition? European music through the nineteenth century was melodically based, much of it with a square or waltz rhythmic structure.
What was the African tradition? Much African music has an organization which is based around rhythm and accent, rhythms and accents that may actually shift and move in relation to each other as the music progresses.
The big change that took place in music rhythmically was the shift away from the Ooom-pah-Ooom-pah (1-2-3-4) rhythmic structure. Ooom-pah has a strong accent on "1." African musical tradition tends to count towards the accented beat so that an African may count 2 on the same beat a European would count 1. It is also typical of West African music to have rhythms of different lengths overlaid each other, creating shifting accents. Which is to say that by the late 1920's African-American Jazz music had developed a tradition where musicians put a strong rhythmic accent on "2" and "4" (oom-PAH-oom-PAH) and melodic accents anywhere BUT on "1."
Ragtime
The first popular musical trend in the United States produced by this African-European synthesis was Ragtime which first achieved popularity in the late 19th century. Ragtime musicians often used what are called "ragged" rhythms.
In 1928 Henderson lost his arranger and he tried his own hand at creating the band's charts. It turned out that Fletcher was not only an excellent arranger, but he was essentially the first to arrange music in the style we now describe as "big band."
Duke Ellington, a formally trained musician, also formed his band in the 1920's, again as a dance band. The arrival of an innovative trumpeter named Bubber Miley and a talented saxophonist named Sidney Bechet exerted a profound influence on the Ellington's work, gradually helping to change the band into a remarkably creative Jazz big band.
Bubber developed a style that included a lot of blue notes, growling sounds and effects that attracted a lot of attention to the band. Bechet only stayed with the band for a short time, but he had a strong feeling for Jazz, giving the band not only a sense for the mechanics but also for Jazz phrasing. Ellington described Bechet as the "epitome of Jazz."
One other well-known and well-loved band in NYC at this time was Chick Webb's. The band started in the mid-1920's and became a regular band at the Savoy, which opened in 1926. It was Chick Webb's band at the Savoy that won several famous "battles of the bands", most notably with Count Basie and Benny Goodman. (And, in 1934, it was Webb that gave Ella Fitzgerald her start in the music business.)
Most of New York's Jazz clubs were in Harlem, and in 1925-26 there appeared several popular plays and a book which portrayed Harlem as the happening place in NYC. As a result, downtowners and tourists streamed into Harlem to see this colorful neighborhood, and the nightlife took off.
It was at this time that a great number of now-famous clubs opened. The Savoy (Chick Webb's regular gig) and the Cotton Club (Ellington's regular gig) were two of these clubs. The good thing about the many new clubs was it gave employment to many African-American musicians and variety artists. Although the Savoy was integrated, it was nearly alone in that respect; most other clubs were segregated. They featured African-American entertainers, but were owned and operated by Whites for a white clientele.
From 1927 until the late 1930's things were so busy in From 1927 until the late 1930's things were so busy in Harlem that good musicians could play every night of the year, sometimes in many different bands, due to constant personnel changes in most of them.
It Don't Mean a Thing...
However, it wasn't until 1935 that Jazz with a "Swing beat" achieved national attention and then in large part to Benny Goodman.
As a youth Goodman was an extremely talented clarinetist. He studied with a respected Jazz clarinetist in Chicago, leaving Chicago in 1928 for NYC where he was successful as a sideman. However, he didn't form his own band until a few years later when he got a recording contract thanks to the great Jazz impresario John Hammond. Soon after that he bought some scores from Fletcher Henderson, some of them arranged by Henderson himself. Despite Henderson's fine arrangements, his band hadn't been doing well. Goodman, at the urging of John Hammond (he was a most remarkable man, influencing the history of early Jazz as much, if not more, as any musician), hired Fletcher.
The same arrangements which brought Henderson's band lukewarm interest proved to be dynamite for the Goodman band. For the next several years Henderson arranged tunes for Goodman band in a Jazz/Swing style.
Benny Goodman, King of Swing
Henderson's arrangements (with the help of a flourishing radio broadcast industry) are credited with helping sweep the Goodman band to national popularity the following year at the finish of an apparently unsuccessful cross-country tour in California.
As it turned out, the radio broadcasts of the tour were scheduled too late for people in the east and midwest. On the west coast, however, the broadcasts gained a devoted audience who, surprising the band, swarmed its final concerts. And it was with Benny Goodman that the Swing big band boom began, and our narrative on Jazz draws to a close.
After Goodman's dramatic success ignited the Big Band craze, excellent musicians who had been working as sidemen for other bands found encouragement to start their own bands. Bands led by the Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Bunny Berrigan, Lionel Hampton, Harry James and Gene Krupa sprang into being. Also at this time Count Basie's band came to New York from its original home in Kansas City.
With big band Swing music in full flower, it was only logical that jitterbug dancing should also rocket to national popularity, which it did.
Bob Thomas
