Big Band Music in Old Time Radio

Big Bands are a music ensemble group featuring a dozen or so members led by a charismatic band leader. Big Band on the radio added rhythm and musical excitement to homes across America and the world and introduced African-American musicality to a bigger audience.  During the Great Depression, musicians were looking for work and many could be hired at a lower salary. This took band groups from four or five individuals to a bigger group dynamic adding to the complexity and depth of the sound. 

To those of us who grew up after the Greatest Generation, the soundtrack for the Second World War is Big Band Swing Music. It is nearly impossible to hear a few bars by the Dorsey Brother, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, or Benny Goodman without visions of pretty girls in pretty dresses and carefully coiffed hairdos dancing with clean-cut, handsome young men in khaki or sailor-blues.

There is much more to American Wartime culture than Swing Dancing, just as there is more to Big Band Music than Wartime Newsreel dancing. Evolving circuitously from New Orleans Jazz, Big Band Swing was more than the music of a generation it would exist as an art form in its own right.

"It Don't Mean a Thing…"

As the nineteenth century was drawing to a close, Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" became Ragtime's first hit. Interest in Ragtime would quickly fade after Joplin's death in 1917, but the form's syncopated-marching beat and athletic bass lines would influence musicians in New Orleans who were picking up cast-off instruments from military units which disbanded at the port when the Spanish American War ended.

New Orleans Jazz moved North with the Great Migration to become a nightclub staple in Chicago and Harlem. The enticing rhythms soon attracted white audiences, which made the form acceptable for white musicians to emulate. 

By definition, Big Band Music is jazz performed by an ensemble, typically ten or more instruments. A group this large can easily become unwieldy and requires a firm hand on the part of the bandleader to produce music. Additionally, larger venues were required, not only to allow room for such a large band but also to allow a large enough crowd to pay all the players in such a large outfit.

The answer was to turn to dance music which would fill the halls. This discouraged some of the raucous improvisations that marked traditional Jazz, which perfectly suited the more controlling bandleaders. However, there was always room in the arrangements for a hot soloist.

Pretty Girls to Sell the Song

A song that could be sung was remembered the next day and might attract more fans to the live show. Until electrical amplification advanced, the band usually drowned out the singer. Better microphones and amplifiers not only allowed crooners to sing with Big Bands but also made it possible for bandleaders to hire girl singers.

It is difficult to judge just how scandalous it might have been for an unchaperoned young lady to be on the road with ten or more young musicians, but the situation was not uncommon. In some cases, an aunt or mother might travel with the band for appearance's sake. Sometimes the girl singer wound up married to the bandleader or another member of the outfit.

A few of the ladies whose career was boosted by Big Band exposure includes Doris Day who sang for Jimmy Jones, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown; Ginny Simms whose gig with Kay Kyser led to her film career, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and several others; and Benny Goodman Orchestra vet Peggy Lee.

From the Dance Halls to the Airwaves

Advances in electrical engineering led to another way for bandleaders to pay the bills, namely by allowing regular remote broadcasts of the bands' performances. There were, of course, studio shows featuring Big Bands, and most popular Comedy Variety shows featured an Orchestra, often with the bandleader acting as a foil for the show's headliner. 

Remote broadcasts were often what music fans wanted to hear. Whether you were back on the farm, cutting a rug on the front porch with your best girl, in a downtown apartment living room with her parents just down the hall, or stuck in a barracks far from home wishing she was in your arms, the radio brought the music of your lives to life.

Some of the most popular Big Band radio broadcasts of the era:

Quick Reference Guide to Big Band Radio Broadcasts:

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