That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

Chapter 6: The Golden Era of Big Band Swing: The 1930s and Beyond
Comparing Henderson’s big band during the group’s formative years in the
1920s, with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers of that same era, gives you
an idea of the music’s evolution. Morton brought opera and classical influences
into his music, but his arrangements, although tight, were never as
intricate or inventive as Redman’s arrangements for Henderson. Morton’s
band included seven members, compared with the 10 or 12 or more that
added new colors, complexities, and textures beginning with Henderson.
With its rich orchestrations, swinging rhythms, and subtle interplay between
sections, Henderson’s big band (including star soloists Louis Armstrong and
Lester Young) was the most important forerunner of the legendary big bands
of the 1930s. After Henderson became Benny Goodman’s arranger, musical
ideas transferred from one generation to the next.
Henderson’s importance is apparent on the boxed-set The Fletcher Henderson
Story: A Study in Frustration (Sony) and the multi-volume Fletcher Henderson
CD series on the Classics label.
Fletcher Henderson’s peers
Henderson boosted jazz into the modern era of big band swing by expanding
the size of jazz bands toward full-blown big bands, handpicking his star
soloists, and arranging material to showcase them. As the music picked up
steam, several other bandleaders helped bring the new music to the brink of
its golden era. Of course, Duke Ellington began organizing big bands in the
1920s and eventually built bands that many critics and fans feel were the
finest of the swing era. Ellington is covered later in this chapter.
Meanwhile, as Henderson and Ellington led the charge, several other bigband
leaders helped sustain the moment into the 1930s prime of swing. Some
were pure showmen who knew how to grab and hold an audience. Others
placed a higher priority on jazz as an art form. Let’s take a close look at a few
of the prime big band leaders from the music’s formative years.
� Cab Calloway (1907–1994): The “Hi-De-Ho” man mesmerized audiences —
beginning at Harlem’s Cotton Club in the ’30s — with his wild jazz,
flip-flopping hair, big smile, warm vocals, and big bands.
� Benny Carter (1907–2003): Carter played a part in nearly every phase of
jazz’s development. His instrumental talents included the saxophone
and trumpet, but Carter also composed and arranged music. During the
early 1930s, he performed and arranged for Fletcher Henderson and
McKinney’s Cotton Pickers.
97