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The Swing Era Big Bands (1936 - 1941)
by Russell Perry
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the very dance-oriented swinging music of the Big Bands was the most popular music around. Never had jazz been more central to mass culture. Just over the horizon were the draft of 1940 that eventually conscripted 10 million men, making it increasingly difficult to field top notch bands; war ...
Small Groups of the 1930s – Benny Goodman, Django Reinhardt, and John Kirby (1934 - 1941)
by Russell Perry
In the last hour we heard from prominent Swing Era soloists Chu Berry, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Hodges and Lester Young, featured in small group settings. Continuing in the small group vein, in this hour we'll hear from the Benny Goodman Trio, Quartet and sextet, Django Reinhardt and le Quintette Du Hot Club de France avec Stéphane ...
Small Groups of the 1930s – Chu, Little Jazz, Rabbit and Pres (1937 - 1940)
by Russell Perry
While the jazz of the thirties was predominantly remembered as coming from orchestras and big bands, seminal soloists continued to record memorable music in small group settings, setting the stage for disruptive industry transitions to come in the 1940s. Small groups led by Chu Berry, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Hodges and Lester Young in this hour of ...
The Entertainers - Fats Waller (1929 - 1943)
by Russell Perry
By far the most commercially successful of the stride pianists, Fats Waller made his reputation (and his living) through comedy. “He wasn't witty, if that word is taken to imply a kind of humor too subtle to engender belly laughs—he was funny. He was also bigger than life, Rabelaisian in intake, energy, and output. His greatest ...
The Entertainers – Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton (1929 - 1940)
by Russell Perry
Jazz has often been looked at through the lens of the conflict between art and commerce. In the 1930s, several artists successfully blurred these distinctions. Louis Armstrong adopted popular song as his vehicle for a successful career shift into the mainstream. Cab Calloway defined his popular hipster persona while fronting one of the most professional big ...
Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald (1936 - 1945)
by Russell Perry
Billie Holiday began recording at 18, in a 1933 session with Benny Goodman and was musically active until her death at 44 in 1959. Ella Fitzgerald also began recording at 18 (in 1935 as the singer with Chick Webb), but in her case, her career surged again in the mid-1950's with the songbook series on Verve. ...
Chick Webb & Benny Goodman (1933 - 1938)
by Russell Perry
In the mid-1930s, jazz orchestras led by drummer Chick Webb and clarinetist Benny Goodman rose to prominence with the arrangements of Edgar Sampson and Fletcher Henderson. After launching the careers of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, Webb succumbed to spinal tuberculosis in 1939, at age 34. Goodman launched the careers of Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Lionel ...
Beyond Category - Duke Ellington in the 1930s (1931 - 1940)
by Russell Perry
In the last hour, we heard Count Basie emerge as an exciting new voice from Kansas City. In this hour, we return to New York to follow Duke Ellington's innovative path through the 1930s as he experiments with longer musical forms while building one of his greatest bands featuring tenor player Ben Webster and bassist Jimmy ...
Count Basie - Dueling Tenors and the Great American Rhythm Section (1937 - 1940)
by Russell Perry
In the eleventh hour of Jazz at 100, we followed Count Basie through the Benny Moten Band in Kansas City and heard his first recordings as a leader. In 1937, after Benny Moten's death, he took the nation by storm with his driving band lead by the “All American Rhythm Section" and the dual tenor saxophones ...
The Ascent of the Tenor - Coleman Hawkins (1929 - 1939)
by Russell Perry
The clarinet dominated the reeds throughout the 1920s. Sidney Bechet made a stand with the soprano sax and Frankie Trumbauer celebrated the lightness of the C-melody sax. And then there was Coleman Hawkins. Our guest in this hour is Jeff Decker—saxophonist, composer, educator and member of the jazz performance faculty of the University of ...
