Swing Era (1/4)

The Swing era was the period of time (1935--1946) when big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States. Though the music had been around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Benny Moten, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, most historians believe that the Swing Era started with Benny Goodman’s performance at the Palomar Ballroom on August 21, 1935, bringing the music to the rest of the country. The swing era was precipitated by spicing up familiar commercial, popular material with a Harlem oriented flavour and selling it via a white band for a white musical/commercial audience. Other musicians who rose during this time include Jimmy Dorsey, his brother Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday, Glenn Miller, Count Basie and Goodman’s future rival Artie Shaw. Several factors led to the demise of the swing era: the recording ban from August 1942 to November 1944