The Best of Jazz Big Band Music

The Best of Jazz Big Band Music is a blog dedicated to showcasing the best jazz big band music from around the world. Featuring both new and classic tracks, this is the perfect place for any jazz lover to find their new favorite band.

Introduction

Jazz big band music reached the height of its popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. Big bands were typically made up of five sections: saxophones, trombones, trumpets, rhythm (guitar, bass, drums), and vocalists. These bands played a style of Jazz that was influenced by both African and European music traditions. Big band Jazz was characterized by its large sound, complex arrangements, and use of improvisation.

One of the most popular big bands was led by Duke Ellington. His band included some of the most famous Jazz musicians of all time, such as Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, and Cootie Williams. Ellington and his band were known for their sophisticated arrangements and their ability to appeal to a wide range of audiences. Another popular big band leader was Count Basie. His band was known for its swing style and for featuring some of the best soloists in Jazz history, such as Lester Young and Jo Jones.

Big band Jazz went out of fashion in the late 1940s as smaller groups became more popular. However, the style has undergone a resurgence in recent years, thanks in part to the efforts of contemporary big band leaders like Maria Schneider and Darcy James Argue.

The Swing Era

The Swing Era was a time when big band music was at its peak. Many of the best jazz musicians of all time got their start during this era. If you’re a fan of big band music, then you’ll love this list of the best of the best.

The Birth of Swing

The Swing Era is said to have begun in 1935 and ended in 1946. This era is associated with jazz big bands and Cab Calloway. The term “Swing”, coined by DJs, came to describe the feel of the music. The style was marked by an emphasis on rhythm and appeared in songs like “A String of Pearls” by Glenn Miller and “In the Mood” by Joe Garland. How did this style develop?

The roots of swing are found in New Orleans Jazz. This style was developed by African American musicians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and a lack of formal structure. New Orleans Jazz was played at parties and dances, and it eventually made its way up the Mississippi River to Chicago.

In Chicago, jazz began to be influenced by other genres like blues and gospel. Musicians started to use more instruments, including trumpets, trombones, and saxophones. The popularity of jazz clubs like the Palomar Ballroom helped to spread the new sound.

By the mid-1930s, jazz bands like those led by Benny Goodman and Count Basie were playing to packed houses across America. The sound of these big bands would come to define the Swing Era.

The Big Bands

The Big Bands were the heart and soul of the Swing Era. We think of them as huge orchestras with names like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Woody Herman. But actually, most big bands had only 15 or 16 pieces. What made them sound so big was the way they were arranged. The band was divided into sections: reeds, brass and rhythm. Each section played a different role in the band’s sound.

The reed section (saxophones and clarinets) played the melody or “head” of the tune. The brass section (trumpets and trombones) usually played harmony parts or improvised solos. The rhythm section (piano, bass and drums) kept the beat and provided a “walking” bass line that formed the foundation of the band’s sound. There was also a fourth section in some bands – a vocal group that sang close harmony arrangements of popular songs.

The best big bands had a “sound” that was distinctive and easily recognizable. That sound was created by the leader of the band – the person who chose the tunes, wrote the arrangements and led the rehearsals. Some of the best-known bandleaders were Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Woody Herman.

The King of Swing

The Swing Era is often considered to have begun in 1935 and ended in the early 1940s, though some commentators include a period from the late 1930s to the mid 1940s. By 1932, big bands had become popular enough to sell millions of records and attract large audiences to dance venues such as the Savoy Ballroom in New York City and the Roseland Ballroom in Chicago.

The Swing Era saw the rise of some of the most influential jazz musicians of all time, including Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. It was also a time when many white bandleaders began to feature African American musicians in their bands, helping to break down racial barriers in the music industry.

Swing music was characterized by its distinctive rhythmic feel, which was created by the use of syncopated rhythms on top of a walking bass line. This gave the music a “swinging” feel that dancers found irresistible. The best swing bands were able to create a “fat” sound that filled up dance floors and made people want to move.

Bebop

Bebop is a style of jazz characterized by fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation. It emerged in the early 1940s and reached its height of popularity in the mid-1940s. Bebop was developed by a small group of musicians who came to be known as the “bebop generation.” Many of the musicians who developed bebop were from America’s Midwestern “Heartland,” including Illinois, Ohio, and Kansas.

The Birth of Bebop

In the early 1940s, bebop emerged from the hipster underground of lower Manhattan’s 52nd Street nightclubs. The music was a reaction against the swinging big bands that then dominated jazz. Beboppers favored small groups–usually a quartet or quintet featuring trumpet, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums–and a style that was highly original, complex and frequently quite fast.

The leading exponents of bebop–tenor saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie–were both prodigious virtuosos who quickly absorbed the musical lessons of their predecessors to create something new. (In addition to his work with bebop, Gillespie is also considered one of the architects of Afro-Cuban jazz.) The beboppers’ approach to improvisation was based on rigorous technique and a deep understanding of chord structures; their solos were often difficult for even other musicians to follow.

The Bebop Revolution

In the early 1940s, a new style of jazz emerged that came to be known as bebop. Bebop was developed by a group of young musicians who were tired of the predictability of the big band music that was popular at the time. These musicians were influenced by African American musical traditions, as well as the blues and European classical music.

The bebop style was characterized by its fast tempo, complex melodies, and improvisation. Bebop musicians often used extended chords and unusual harmonic progressions that were not found in earlier forms of jazz. This made bebop more challenging to play, and it was not initially popular with audiences.

However, over time, bebop became one of the most influential styles of jazz. Many of the greatest names in jazz, including Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, were associated with bebop. The bebop style laid the foundation for later forms of jazz such as hard bop and post-bop.

The Bebop Masters

Bebop was the first style of jazz to be performed predominately by African Americans. In bebop, the melody is often improvised, or ad-libbed, and is played over a set of chord changes. This style developed during the 1940s and is still considered one of jazz’s most important innovations.

Some of the most famous bebop musicians include Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk. These musicians were all pioneers in the development of bebop, and their influence can still be heard in today’s jazz.

Hard Bop

The hard bop style of jazz developed in the mid-1950s and reached its peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is a style of jazz that combines bebop, blues, and gospel music. Hard bop is a reaction to the dominant cool jazz style of the 1950s.

The Birth of Hard Bop

In the 1940s and 1950s, bebop musicians such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie created a new style of jazz that was faster and more complex than the earlier swing style. Bebop was also more influenced by African-American music, such as the blues, than swing was. Bebop musicians sometimes used unusual harmonic progressions (chord changes), and they often improvised solos that were very different from the melody of the tune.

In the 1950s, a group of young jazz musicians began to play a new style of music that combined elements of bebop and swing. This new style became known as hard bop. Hard bop was slower and not as complex harmonically as bebop, but it retained some of bebop’s African-American influences. Hard bop was also more emotional than either bebop or swing, and it often had a “bluesy” feeling. Hard bop became very popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Hard Bop Movement

Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that developed in the mid-1950s, described as “a return to small combo jazz, but with enlarged harmonic vocabulary and occasionally extended improvisations.” It unemployed the fast tempos and improvisational aggression of bebop, creating a more metal sound that emphasized repetitive grooves with intricate compositions.

The hard bop movement coalesced in 1953 and 1954, spurred in part by the composition “Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers” by Art Blakey and Horace Silver. Other important figures in hard bop included Brown’s bandmate Clifford Brown, as well as Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Miles Davis, Max Roach, Jimmy Heath, Wynton Kelly, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Melba Liston, Julian Priester, and Paul Chambers. Many bebop musicians employed by Parker and Gillespie continued to play an influential role in hard bop.

The Hard Bop Masters

The hard bop masters were a group of jazz musicians who came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were influenced by bebop, but they created a harder, more driving sound that was influenced by rhythm and blues and gospel music. The hard bop masters included such greats as Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Art Blakey, and Sonny Rollins.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Jazz Big Band Music is truly an American original art form that has had a profound influence on the course of music history. This type of music continues to evolve and grow in popularity all over the world. If you have never had the opportunity to experience a live Jazz Big Band performance, I highly recommend that you do so at your earliest convenience. It is an experience that you will not soon forget.