Henderson, Basie, and Big-Band Jazz

Jazz is where you find it, and there have been times when the aficionado has had to plow through half an acre of Whiteman violins to hear the Beiderbecke cornet singing to the Teagarden trombone. For the most part, urban jazz is an intimate experience, the product of cellar joints and after-hours hideaways. This is where the ideas are conceived that grow up and find their way into the recording studios. It is the function of a given place and of the musicians who at a given time and with a given impetus respond to obscure stimuli to create an elusive quality.

But jazz has also made its way in the market place where it must follow schedules and turn itself on and off like a spigot on a beer barrel. If the values of the market place dominate completely, the result is commercial and—from the jazzman’s standpoint—of no value. Whatever the purists may say, and they are always saying it, great jazz has been produced by the so-called swing bands of the 1930s and early 1940s—bands which succeeded or failed in direct relation to the discipline imposed by their leaders, to the rigorous effort in rehearsal exacted of the sidemen, and to the genius of soloists who could rise with the applause of sometimes untutored enthusiasts and produce notable hours on the bandstand.

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Ralph de Toledano

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Jazz is where you find it, and there have been times when the aficionado has had to plow through half an acre of Whiteman violins to hear the Beiderbecke cornet singing to the Teagarden trombone. For the most part, urban jazz is an intimate experience, the product of cellar joints and after-hours hideaways. This is where the ideas are conceived that grow up and find their way into the recording studios. It is the function of a given place and of the musicians who at a given time and with a given impetus respond to obscure stimuli to create an elusive quality.

But jazz has also made its way in the market place where it must follow schedules and turn itself on and off like a spigot on a beer barrel. If the values of the market place dominate completely, the result is commercial and—from the jazzman’s standpoint—of no value. Whatever the purists may say, and they are always saying it, great jazz has been produced by the so-called swing bands of the 1930s and early 1940s—bands which succeeded or failed in direct relation to the discipline imposed by their leaders, to the rigorous effort in rehearsal exacted of the sidemen, and to the genius of soloists who could rise with the applause of sometimes untutored enthusiasts and produce notable hours on the bandstand.