MUSIC 151 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Jack Washington, Beguines And Beghards, Artie Shaw
Document Summary
The swing years: the most popular period for jazz took place from about 1935 to 1945; it is usually referred to as the swing era . It is characterized by large bands and complicated dance numbers: one of the most significant of these bands from the early period of the big band was the fletcher henderson orchestra. He was a fine arranger, but left much of the arranging to his lead saxophonist, don redman (1900 1964): another significant fledgling big band was the paul whiteman orchestra. Instead of the frontline horn section of a clarinet, trumpet, and trombone, big band horn sections were much larger. They used a section of three (later four or five) saxophones, two trumpets (later three or four), and one trombone (later from two to four). The reason for the saxophone"s appearance in dance orchestras was to reinforce or replace the string section, since they were louder but had a similar timbre.
