A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands.
Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombone playing. His theme song was "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You". His technical skill on the trombone gave him renown among other musicians. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey. After Dorsey broke with his brother in the mid-1930s, he led an extremely successful band from the late 1930s into the 1950s. He is best remembered for standards such as "Opus One", "Song of India", "Marie", "On Treasure Island", and his biggest hit single, "I'll Never Smile Again".
James Francis Dorsey was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You " and "It's The Dreamer In Me". His other major recordings were "Tailspin", "John Silver", "So Many Times", "Amapola", "Brazil ", "Pennies from Heaven" with Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Frances Langford, "Grand Central Getaway", and "So Rare". He played clarinet on the seminal jazz standards "Singin' the Blues" in 1927 and the original 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind", which were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader who rose to fame during the swing era. His career and influence were shortened by alcoholism, and ended with his early demise at the age of 33 from cirrhosis. Although he composed some jazz instrumentals such as "Chicken and Waffles" and "Blues", Berigan was best known for his virtuoso jazz trumpeting. His 1937 classic recording "I Can't Get Started" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975.
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra was an American swing dance band that was formed by Glenn Miller in 1938. Arranged around a clarinet and tenor saxophone playing melody, and three other saxophones playing harmony, the band became the most popular and commercially successful dance orchestra of the swing era and one of the greatest singles charting acts of the 20th century. As of 2024, Ray Anthony is the last surviving member of the orchestra.
Boniface Ferdinand Leonard "Buddy" DeFranco was an Italian-American jazz clarinetist. In addition to his work as a bandleader, DeFranco led the Glenn Miller Orchestra for almost a decade in the 1960s and 1970s.
The swing era was the period (1933–1947) when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States, especially for teenagers. Though this was its most popular period, the music had actually been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, and Fletcher Henderson, and white bands from the 1920s led by the likes of Jean Goldkette, Russ Morgan and Isham Jones. An early milestone in the era was from "the King of Swing" Benny Goodman's performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. The 1930s also became the era of other great soloists: the tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster and Lester Young; the alto saxophonists Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges; the drummers Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Jo Jones and Sid Catlett; the pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; the trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Bunny Berigan, and Rex Stewart.
"Begin the Beguine" is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard the Cunard ocean liner Franconia from Kalabahi, Indonesia, to Fiji. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theatre in New York City.
Enoch Henry Light was an American classically trained violinist, danceband leader, and recording engineer. As the leader of various dance bands that recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at least 1940, Light and his band primarily worked in various hotels in New York. For a time in 1928 he also led a band in Paris. In the 1930s Light also studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara in Paris.
Dave Tough was an American jazz drummer associated with Dixieland and swing jazz in the 1930s and 1940s.
Al Klink was an American swing jazz tenor saxophonist.
Santo J. "Sonny" Russo was an American jazz trombonist.
Billboard Pop Memories is a series of compilation albums released by Rhino Records in 1994, each featuring ten hit recordings spanning a five- or ten-year period from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Between 1938 and 1944, Glenn Miller and His Orchestra released 266 singles on the monaural ten-inch shellac 78 rpm format. Their studio output comprised a variety of musical styles inside of the Swing genre, including ballads, band chants, dance instrumentals, novelty tracks, songs adapted from motion pictures, and, as the Second World War approached, patriotic music.
Walt Levinsky was an American big band and orchestral player, composer, arranger, and bandleader. While many of his big band assignments were as lead alto sax player, his favorite instrument was the clarinet.
This Is Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra, Vol. 1 is the first of two volumes originally released in a 1971 series by RCA Victor, which was created in response to a resurgence in big band recreations during the late '60s and early '70s, and is a reissue of 20 famous recordings by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra. The album was subsequently re-released in 2001 by Collectables Records.
The Glenn Miller Carnegie Hall Concert is a live album by Glenn Miller and his Orchestra. It documents a live concert recorded in Carnegie Hall in 1939. The album was released by RCA Victor in 1958.
Smoke Rings is a compilation album of phonograph records released by Victor Records in 1944 featuring Swing-era recordings of eight bandleaders as a part of their Musical Smart Set series. The set was released in conjunction with Up Swing during the American Federation of Musicians strike and features popular recordings by the various artists.
Joseph P. Lippman was an American composer, arranger, conductor, pianist, and songwriter working in jazz and traditional pop. His musical career was over five decades long, having started at age 19 with the Benny Goodman orchestra in 1934 and writing for television, films, and Broadway in the 1980s. He composed and arranged for Bunny Berigan, Jimmy Dorsey, Sarah Vaughan, Charlie Parker and worked as staff arranger in television for Perry Como and Hollywood Palace.
