SWING DANCE ~ LINDY HOP ~ HUSTLE
~ Alaska
Archive 8
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(Text is adapted from “The Swing Book”):
“MORE OF THE
RISE AND FALL OF SWING”!!
WWII ended -- and suddenly it seemed like the end of swing
too! By late 1946 Woody Herman, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Carter,
and Les Brown had all disbanded their bands. Soon after, Cab Calloway,
Charlie Barnet, and Artie Shaw called it quits too. Count Basie held on
until 1950, but an era had passed. Why? There were a number of
reasons. The main reason? The crowds were home watching t.v.!
A 1940s t.v. cost as much as a small car!
By 1951, Families could easily afford t.v.s
(Programming was often rather dull…)
Actually television was just one of the reasons the big bands
disappeared. A 30 percent cabaret tax instituted in 1944 raised the price
of going out. GIs returning home from the war, once the young fans of
swing, were older and starting families. The war also put a major strain
on the bands. Besides losing major swing band leaders like Glenn Miller,
the bands were hampered at home from touring by gas and rubber rationing – and
by the draft. The bands were losing their musicians to the military.
“The war took all the men,” said Norma Miller.
In addition, more low blows by the war included: the manufacture
of jukeboxes was stopped and record production was cut 30%.
(1942
“Victory” Jukebox)
And, at the same time, the musicians were striking, a standoff
between the American Federation of Musicians union and the music industry
actually created a ban on recordings by orchestras. Begun in late
1942, the union strike lasted more than a year. Swing was crippled.
Swing was down, but it wasn’t out – it evolved. In the
1940’s a New Orleans Jazz revival took off. At the same time, out popped
Bop. Many of the proponents of Bop, like Dizzy Gillespie, had been swing
band players. Unfortunately Bop’s emphasis was on dissonance and simply
didn’t have much, if any, melody. And it wasn’t danceable. “When I
came out of the army we got a gig working with Dizzy Gillespie’s band and
afterward I said, ‘Dizzy what is this stuff? What the f— is that?’
I did not understand that music at all,” said Frankie Manning.
Dizzy
Gillespie & Band (1947)
Just as jazz and dance split apart, so did jazz and popular
music. Vocalists, not orchestras, began to dominate the charts.
During the Big Band era, singers were just another instrument in the
band. “The bandleader never wanted to be outshone by anybody.
So most of the male vocalists had to stand there, ramrod stiff, sing a chorus,
go sit down, get up, sing the last chorus, and sit down again, “ recalled
Frankie Laine, who became one of the biggest new solo singers of the late 1940s
and early 1950s.
Frankie
Laine
Peggy Lee
Nat King Cole
Singers like Peggy Lee, Patti Page, and Nat King Cole benefited
from the change, but the man who kicked it all of was . . . Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra quit Tommy Dorsey’s band in the early 1940s and struck out
on his own. The focus quickly became the singer – and the orchestra
became just the back up crew. While many singers still performed music
that swung, they more often sang it in a lounge instead of a dancehall.
The singers weren’t connecting with dancers like before – but swing for dancers
was evolving too. . . .
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