Zoot Sims Bandleader Woody Herman created a distinctive sound around The Four Brothers – the three tenor plus baritone sax front line of Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Herbie Stewart (later Al Cohn) and Serge Chaloff – and the writing of clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre. In time, Getz, Sims, Chaloff, Cohn and Giuffre would all become distinctive […]
Woody Herman
-
-
Jazz at 100 Hour 22: Bebop Big Bands – Earl Hines, Billy Eckstine, Woody Herman, Claude Thornhill (1940 – 1947)
Billy Eckstine and his Orchestra Although Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Woody Herman soldiered on, mostly keeping bands on the road into the 1970s (Ellington) and 1980s (Basie and Herman), the era of the big band effectively ended with the AFM strike and World War Two shortages of gas, rubber and players. A leaner combo-oriented […]
-
Jazz at 100 Hour 21: The Swing Era Big Bands (1936 – 1941)
Artie Shaw 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 […]