December 9, 2021 • 27 mins
During the heyday of live jazz music, the charismatic and ambitious one who kept it all together was the Big Band Orchestra Leader. Helen and Matt explore how the occupation gave rise to the birth of the modern pop singer.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Jobs Elite, where we talk about jobs that
are long gone today. We're looking at a job from
when the only way for most people to hear music
was live and a big part of any local music
scene was big band orchestras. And in this episode we're
learning about who led them old tommy phono graphs, silent
(00:26):
films with live bands. You're not ready for this, but
your kids are gonna love it finding band members without Craigslist.
The last generation bath tub booze will make you go blind,
black and white audiences coming together, and hot clarinetists. So
what do you know about big bands orchestras and their leaders?
(00:50):
I don't know much. I know what big bands are.
They do like that swing type of music, and there
was obviously like a horn section and rhythm section and
all that, and there was usually like a leader type person.
I think maybe did the leader type person usually play
an instrument to like a trumpet or something. Yeah, that
(01:11):
was actually kind of what makes them distinct from your
typical orchestra leader. So a big band orchestra leader actually
did a lot more than just lead the band they were.
They did a lot of things. Actually, we're going to
learn about that in this episode. But we're talking just
a little little preview here. We're talking about sometimes they'd
(01:32):
make the songs, compose the and arrange the music. They
book stuff, you know, be like managers. They would have
auditions for band members and manage them. Sometimes act as
accountants or business managers. I mean that, Yeah, they were.
It was quite a wide range of skills. I had
no idea that accounting was part of the job description
(01:52):
of a big band leader. To make sure all of
everybody's getting paid. That's true. If you have twenty band members, Yeah,
you need to get them all paid for sure. So Matt,
should we Are you ready to jump? Yes? Are you
ready to jump into the jobsolete time machine? Yeah, back
to the roaring twenties, the heyday of the big band
(02:13):
orchestra leader. Doo doo doo doo doo doo do do. Okay,
we are Actually, let's go to the first two decades
of the nineteen hundreds as a whole here, because this
is something that's always fascinated me. Early recordings. Do you
remember ever listening to early recordings at some point in
(02:34):
your life. Yeah, they're really scratchy sounding, and they sound
like their Three Rooms away. But you know, when vinyl
first was invented, that's just all there was. Yes, yes,
so some context here. Early record players were called phonographs,
and they were much more high maintenance when they were
(02:55):
very expensive too, when they first came out, so the
late eighteen hundreds, most to Americans, most people around the
world could not afford them. But in the early nineteen hundreds,
all of a sudden, they were able to reach a
point where they could produce them more cheaply. And so
you go from like four million phonographs and homes in
(03:15):
nineteen hundred to almost thirty million ten years later. And
and then a few years later we have radios, which
they didn't start to become more popular and affordable until
the nineteen twenties. And so you're just thinking, Okay, more
and more people can listen to music in their homes.
They can have parties and save money. They don't have
(03:37):
to go to concerts to listen to live music anymore.
They can actually just all gather around the phonograph. But
what was crazy is that even the record players were
becoming more affordable. By World War One, live music actually exploded.
It got more popular. That kind of makes sense because
(03:57):
if you have a record player and you buy a
record that you really love. Now you're like hooked on
this band or this artist and you're like, oh my god,
I would love to see this person live or this genre. Right,
because jazz also is this new genre, this exciting that's
entering the scene by that time, and that's why we
(04:18):
have this whole culture and this phenomenon. And today we've
got an expert, of course, to explain that phenomenon more specifically.
He's a musician in a big band orchestra, and he's
actually he leads a band based out of New York
City called the Nighthawks, and they specialize in nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties style jazz music. Plus he's a music historian,
(04:43):
so he knows a lot about this. So we talked
to him about how like big bands were becoming a
mainstream thing beginning in in the early the late teens
to early nineteen twenties. Hi, this is Vince Jordano from
Vince Jordano and the Nighthawks starting in the late teens. Uh,
there's always been little combos pianos, but you had big bands,
(05:06):
Like when you went to see a silent film, you
had to have music to accompany the picture, and as
dance halls got bigger, you needed more musicians. You just
couldn't be there with a trio. You'd be lost in
this big dance hall. And people wanted big bands, so
you had by the nineteen twenties, the Roaring twenties, the
(05:28):
idea of a big band maybe twelve pieces. There were six,
some exceptions like Paul Whiteman who had something like twenty
two pieces. Uh, that's where it really started. I forgot that.
At one point there were silent films and the only
way that you a silent film could have a soundtrack
(05:49):
is if you actually had a live band in the
movie theater. Oh yeah, Like that's crazy to me, But
that makes so much sense, is that these silent films,
like you needed a musical accompaniment, and so they would
have a band in the movie theater. Like that's so
it's such a strange concept to me, but back then
it's that's all there was if you needed sound with
your movie. Everybody wanted to dance and socialize and get
(06:13):
out there, and this was the trend. They had some
extra extra time and money for the first time, and
jazz was it. I mean, jazz is like wrapped today.
It's it was the pop music of the time. So
a lot of folks thought that jazz music was actually
corrupting the youth. Jazz was a weird thing that happened
in the twenties. I mean they were articles, like written
(06:36):
newspapers and magazines saying the bad influence on jazz, how
this was leading to you know, staying out late, and
that young people are going to get corrupted, almost like
what happened when rock and roll came in thirty years later.
That's so funny and quaint. There might be an argument
to people saying, oh, the music is corrupting because of
(06:58):
the lyrics were talking about. He's talking about music that
didn't even have lyrics, being like, oh that chord progression,
it's just so dirty, it's so naughty. I think the
main thing was that it really was good at getting
people to dance and what this brought some some people
together and the young girls and the young boys got
(07:19):
together on the weekends and dance to this jazz music.
So I think that was really what they were afraid of.
You know, do you know what the music was, the
pop music before jazz, there really wasn't pop music before jazz,
unless you're talking like John Philip Sousa or like so
it was like classical. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, so they're
(07:41):
like they're jumping from like Beethoven, they're jumping from Beethoven
and Brahms too suddenly, like Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong. Yeah,
I could yeah, you know what, in that context, I
could see that, oh, this is so naughty, it's just
so different. I think that was a big thing too.
I could imagine. I always think about this too, like
(08:02):
somebody who was like the So I will always bring
up movies references, but I don't even care, like Back
to the Future again, Like the Back to the Future one,
he's rocking out on the guitar and the audience in
the nineteen fifties is just staring at and what the
hecks are doing to Yeah, I guess you're not ready
for that, but your parents or but your kids are
gonna love it. And that's the thing, Like it's just
(08:25):
jazz was such a radical departure from earlier styles of music.
But so yeah, these big band orchestra leaders, they were
the face of the jazz orchestra. So what were the
qualifications if you wanted to be a band leader, well,
first you had to be a musician. That's probably something
you would have guessed. Yeah, you had to be ambitious,
(08:45):
you had to be able to manage people. I think
a lot of it was just being able to form
a group and book shows. Everybody was trying to be
the most up to date, the hottest, the jazziest. Like
you had a brass section or maybe say two trumpets
and a trombone at your brass. Then you had three
saxophones that doubled on clarinets and other instruments, so that's
(09:09):
your sack section. And then you had your rhythm section
of a piano, a banjo, a drum, and either you
played tuba or string bass or bass saxophone, so that's
your rhythm section. Later on the music changed with like
i say, the swing era, and you added more brass
and more saxophones. The rhythm pretty much stayed the same,
(09:29):
but the tuba and the banjo went away to replace
with a string bass and the guitar to get a
smoother sound, and drum sets changed to you had ride
symbols and things like that. So the music that was
written in your store bought stock orchestrations would reflect uh
the size of the bands of that time. So you
(09:50):
had your banjo part and your tuba part, and and
the brass and the saxes, and you were able to
have a big band. It's so crazy because in modern
times you hear stories of like bands, the front man
or front woman of a band will be like, oh,
I started a band in high school, or I started
a band after college, and I was friends with the
(10:12):
guitarist and we put an ad on on dregslist for
a drummer, and that's how our band got together. But
that's three or four people. He's talking about hiring a
band of twelve to fifteen people, Like that's you want
to find a lot of people to who play a
lot of different instruments. So it's actually a big undertaking.
(10:33):
If you're a big band leader and you're the one
that has to find these fifteen people. One of them
plays a banjo, three of them play a trumpet. That's crazy,
And you can't just find a good banjo player on
any corner unless maybe you're in New Orleans maybe. But
and then like on top of that, you've got to
feed them and pay them make sure that they keep
coming back, because if they're not getting paid anything, it's
(10:54):
like okay, and where do you even find these people?
Because they didn't have Craigslist. No, you'd have to put
up flyers the old fashioned way up on the streets.
You'd have to network and talk to dance hall managers
(11:18):
and you have to be somebody who was very extroverted
and not afraid to just ask around. And I think
the hardest part was just getting the band started. And
now you have your band, Okay, so what skills are
needed to execute as a as a good big band
orchestra leader. Band leader became a end quote star really
(11:43):
from the nineteen twenties on the early twenties was the
advent of phonograph records and radio appearances and the press
that they got in the newspapers. And when people really
liked a band, well they just knew the band leader.
They didn't really care about the musicians in the band
(12:03):
around They were sort of secondary. Uh So this this
continued in uh in the twenties and thirties, and people
demanded what you did. You played the trumpet of a saxophone,
or you had a big band or a small band
people needed you and they liked you, and you were
(12:25):
sort of a star, you know, so to speak, maybe
in your own hometown or uh. In in a big band,
each band leader has his or her own way of
being the band leader. Some people are show people and
they do little gimmicks and uh get into a little comedy,
little ad lib. And some are very straightforward. They don't
(12:47):
do any kind of commercial uh gesturing. They'll they'll just
be either great musicians or maybe non musicians, but they
they're in front and leading the band in their own way.
That's so similar to the front person of a modern band.
Everyone knows the name of the lead singer of Maroo five,
(13:09):
but no one knows the rest of the band. No
one knows who else five, or like the Killers or
Radiohead or something like. You're very familiar with the lead singer,
but I don't. I couldn't tell you who the bassist
in Radiohead was. Is that Johnny Greenwood? No, I don't know.
I like that example, but no, yeah, like a lot
(13:31):
of it. You're right, A lot of bands have that
lead singer who ends up just having a solo career,
you know, like because of that, and it's the charisma
it's the commanding of a stage that I think those
qualities that are almost intangible sometimes. Yeah, and I know
a lot of people have been visioned when we when
we say like orchestra leader, they're just thinking like, oh yeah,
(13:54):
like he mentioned the baton, just like a conductor, like
actually keeping the beat. And but now lot of these
musicians were professionals. They could keep their own beats, so
really it was more for show. It wasn't like it
was like the big band leader really was just there
to kind of keep the show flowing and keep making
sure that the audience was still entertained, entertained, and I say, hey, guys,
(14:15):
I can I'm reading the audience right now, and I
think we need to go with this song instead of
this song. You know, I wonder if they I wonder
if they had the same like charisma with groupies, like
the way that the lead singer of My Room five
has groupies, or the lead singer of Radio had as groupies.
Like people like women like screaming their name in the
front room and be like, oh my god, he's so sexy.
(14:37):
I wonder if women back then were like look at
the way he plays that trumpet, Oh my god, he's
so hot. You know. That's an interesting thing because like,
you don't hear of the groupie phenomenon until later on
with Elvis and the Beatles. But it doesn't. That doesn't
mean it didn't. We didn't have people like that were
just like following these big band orchestra leaders around. Oh
(14:57):
he's so dreamy. You see the way he leaves a
van and then he started playing the trumpet. I bet
Benny Goodman was getting it. I don't know. I couldn't
tell you. He was definitely a good band leader, though,
I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, yeah,
he was getting it. Are you looking at a picture
of him right now? Should I be? I forgot what
he looked like, Benny good Man. I wonder if he
(15:24):
was American clarinetist. Oh the clarinet. That now that's a
hot instrument, Claire, we play that clarinet. Benny. Oh, he
was so nerdy and unassuming looking. But still if he
was like a hot in his heyday, a hot band lead,
I bet he was getting it. So what was a
typical day like for a band leader? Anywhere from two
(15:45):
to three hours early to set up all the equipment,
the chairs, the stands, the lights, the books, test the microphones,
put up a listing of tunes. Just making sure that
everything's working all those it's very mundane. Make sure all
the bulbs are working in the in the lamps that
are over the music stands, and occasionally there's things that
(16:06):
go wrong and the sound system goes out over the
one of the speakers. The was overused over the weekend
by the DJ and blew a couple of tweeters, And
so you're scuffling around to see how you're gonna make
this night work. And they were the band leader. That
was the whole position of this person's and and and
(16:28):
the others like Duke Gellington sat at the piano and
led the band. Occasionally would get up and direct a
certain ending or beginning. So you needed you needed a
band leader. When you had all these musicians around on
a given night, you'd have hundreds and hundreds of couples
all dancing, all syncopating or waltzing or doing some Latin
(16:52):
steps if if need be. And this was just part
of the whole social scene. It reminds me of when
you do here or about like modern bands and when
they first start out they're like, Oh, we had to
drive to the gig in a van and get there
early and set up all around equipment, and we were
our own roadies, and we had to put up flyers
(17:15):
ourselves to try to get people to come see us.
Like it was, it sounds very similar. This hits really
close to home. That's That's a big chunk of my
life was doing that and playing too in small venues
where ten people show up, but you're doing it all
and it is stressful, but you love it. Like you
think about it. There's so much time and effort that
goes into preparing and then a lot of times the
(17:36):
show itself is what thirty minutes. But I think the
difference with the big band leader like compared to like
a modern band is their mission is to get everybody
in the room dancing, And I don't think I ever
played a show where there was that many, like hardly
anybody dancing. You don't really care as much. It's not
your job. And then everybody in the room how to
be entertained, and I think that was what they made
(17:57):
sure of. It sounds like to me the big band
leaders of the time, like your job was a cross
between a modern dand rock band it's just starting out.
(18:20):
And also a DJ, like a club DJ, where people
come to see you and they're there to dance and
your job was to get them dancing and selling drinks
and stuff like that. Just got out of this horrendous
plague that was around the World War one time. There
was World War One, which was the war to end
all war supposedly, so it was the Victorian values of
(18:43):
the eighteen nineties, and the teens and young people just
didn't want to hear anything about that. They wanted to
dance the hot music. And because they were told that
they could not drink because it was prohibition, forget it.
They were going to drink and they got booze of
all sorts. Some of it was old stock before they
(19:06):
shut it down. Some people made their own booze, some
people smuggled it from Canada or from Cuba, and some
people got sick and got blind and died because of
this bad booze. So it was very high energy times.
I cannot believe that people went blind from that alcohol.
(19:28):
Yeah they did. That's actually where the term blind drunk
comes from, because people this is alcohol that was made
in homes, like a lot of times. It was made
in bathtubs and they had no idea how much alcohol
was in there, and it actually would for some people.
The toxin levels were so high that it could damage
(19:50):
the optic nerve. That's why, Yeah, WHOA. I have had
some strong drinks, but I guess I'm glad for I
guess I'm bucky that even as strong as the drinks
that I've had, at least they were regulated. I was
gonna say, are you are you pro prohibition? Should we
bring prohibition back? Legalized and regulated? So there were many
(20:12):
notable big band orchestra leaders, but I think the one
we're going to focus on in this episode is Paul Whiteman.
Have you heard of Paul Whiteman. I have not. I
hadn't either, and apparently he's a big freaking deal. Um,
Like a lot of standards were like he was responsible for.
So I always the site as Paul Whiteman as being
(20:33):
the first who really set the standards, and a lot
of the band leaders talk about him, guys that went
on to the thirties and forties, even fellows like Duke
Ellington and Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey,
they always talked about Paul Whiteman is sending a standard.
So how and why did the big band era end?
(20:53):
Really from the nineteen twenties on the early twenties with
the advent of phonographer records and radio appearances and the
press that they got in the newspapers, and when people
really liked a band, they just knew the band leader.
They didn't really care about the musicians in the band around.
(21:14):
They were secondary. So this this continued in the twenties
and thirties, and then eventually when the band vocalists started
to really take over, like fellows like Bing Crosby and
later on Frank Sinatra, then they became the big stars
and the band leader was secondary. Yeah. I could see
(21:36):
how if you're the quote unquote frontman of a band.
But then somebody like Frank Sinatra busts out and started singing,
you're no longer the star. Yeah, like if you're take
your clarinet and get back there. We don't need you anymore.
We have this hot singer dude. Especially when they're singing
(21:58):
words about of oh yeah, if they're crooning, that's really
going to get the ladies going. Another thing that developed
was better technology with phonograph records, and so like the
early phonograph records, as you mentioned at the beginning of
this episode, was like, you know, it sounded like it
was they were like three rooms away, really horrible quality sound,
(22:19):
but especially like with horns. And then but once that
technology got better, they're like, oh, you know what, this
actually sounds pretty good even in my living room now,
so I'm just gonna listen to this at home. And
but of course why would I listen to it in
my home? So in the nineteen thirties we also have
the Great Depression. You are so honest, Your history nous
(22:43):
is rubbing off on me. People have to make decisions
that were like, okay, do I eat this week or
do I go buy out or go to a dance hall,
And if you can't afford rice and beans, you're definitely
not affording it ticket to go see a big band.
In the middle of them depression, forget that. And if
(23:04):
they were lucky they did have a radio or some
kind of record player in the house, and then that
would take the place and so you could just dance
at home. Just felt differently, they didn't have to go
out dancing. Hundreds and thousands of people. People also started
to watch their money. They really I didn't want to
(23:24):
go out and spend money dancing. They were raising families. Eventually,
a new tech technology came into being, like television, where
even the movies suffered because people didn't go to the
movies like they used to. Yeah, but I feel like
technology is always going to be driving people home, because
(23:45):
the better the technology is for entertainment in your house,
the less you're going to want to go outside. Because
of Netflix and all the great streaming that I have, Like,
I hardly ever go to the movie theater anymore. And
if you if a ticket to see like your if
a ticket to see Beyonce cost five and seventy dollars,
which it does, then I'll just see the Beyonce concert
(24:06):
on HBO. Yeah. And by the time people did have
money again. So jump ahead to after World War Two.
We see by that time that there are established singers
and including Louis Armstrong, who I said earlier. People may
get it twisted that you know he was more of
a band leader, But no, I think he would at
(24:28):
at his peak of popularity, which he had a very
long career, but at his peak of popularity, he was
a singer and yeah, like and so there was no
stopping that. Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley just just yeahs out
of the bag. There ain't no there ain't no clarinetist
that's gonna go toe to toe with a hot crooner.
(24:52):
I'm sorry, take your trumpet and get go this step
step off with your trumpet. Sorry, Benny, But big band
leaders are still around today. Yeah. I was gonna say,
why are we talking about this as a job slete
if our expert himself is still doing the job today.
(25:12):
People still have nostalgia for this era, this jazz age,
and of course there's a market for that in certain places,
and so plenty of people show up in New York
for Vince's shows with his band. So the night Hawks
kind of fit that the demand for this. I think
that again, it's nostalgia, but it's also it's something that's
(25:32):
just wildly different than other forms of entertainment today. Yeah,
and it's probably as much as Vince and the Night
Hawks is a popular big band, he's probably one of
just a handful, whereas in it's heyday they were probably
like dozens and dozens. Yeah, Yeah, he's definitely stands out.
That's why we reached out to him. I guess it's
(25:52):
not completely job Slete, since we're our expert today is
actually doing this job, and from he described about his
day to day life, it sounds actually very similar to
the job that was done back in the day. But
I guess since job Salete in the sense that he's
probably one of only maybe ten or twelve people who
are doing the job, right. Yeah, I think the we
(26:15):
see the we see like this job and many different
jobs today, but we don't see it as like just
one position. Yeah, it's not like the average person in
the country is going, hey, what do you want to
do this weekend? Movies are a big band, so we
want to know who is your favorite big band orchestra leader.
And I can't hear you right now, so you're gonna
(26:37):
have to go on Twitter and and tell us there.
Tweet at us at job Sleet pod, and you can
find Vince at Vince Jordano dot com. Job Salete is
produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge
Podcasts for You. It's hosted by us Helen Hong That's
Me and Matt That's Me. The show was conceived and
(26:58):
produced by Steve's, Marky, Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our
editor is Tommy Nichol, our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our
production coordinator is Angie Hymes, and theme music is by
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. A special thanks to our I
Heart Radio team, Katrina Norvelle, Nikky Etre, Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman,
(27:21):
Will Pearson, Connal Byrne and Bob Pittman.
This is Jobs Elite, where we talk about jobs that
are long gone today. We're looking at a job from
when the only way for most people to hear music
was live and a big part of any local music
scene was big band orchestras. And in this episode we're
learning about who led them old tommy phono graphs, silent
(00:26):
films with live bands. You're not ready for this, but
your kids are gonna love it finding band members without Craigslist.
The last generation bath tub booze will make you go blind,
black and white audiences coming together, and hot clarinetists. So
what do you know about big bands orchestras and their leaders?
(00:50):
I don't know much. I know what big bands are.
They do like that swing type of music, and there
was obviously like a horn section and rhythm section and
all that, and there was usually like a leader type person.
I think maybe did the leader type person usually play
an instrument to like a trumpet or something. Yeah, that
(01:11):
was actually kind of what makes them distinct from your
typical orchestra leader. So a big band orchestra leader actually
did a lot more than just lead the band they were.
They did a lot of things. Actually, we're going to
learn about that in this episode. But we're talking just
a little little preview here. We're talking about sometimes they'd
(01:32):
make the songs, compose the and arrange the music. They
book stuff, you know, be like managers. They would have
auditions for band members and manage them. Sometimes act as
accountants or business managers. I mean that, Yeah, they were.
It was quite a wide range of skills. I had
no idea that accounting was part of the job description
(01:52):
of a big band leader. To make sure all of
everybody's getting paid. That's true. If you have twenty band members, Yeah,
you need to get them all paid for sure. So Matt,
should we Are you ready to jump? Yes? Are you
ready to jump into the jobsolete time machine? Yeah, back
to the roaring twenties, the heyday of the big band
(02:13):
orchestra leader. Doo doo doo doo doo doo do do. Okay,
we are Actually, let's go to the first two decades
of the nineteen hundreds as a whole here, because this
is something that's always fascinated me. Early recordings. Do you
remember ever listening to early recordings at some point in
(02:34):
your life. Yeah, they're really scratchy sounding, and they sound
like their Three Rooms away. But you know, when vinyl
first was invented, that's just all there was. Yes, yes,
so some context here. Early record players were called phonographs,
and they were much more high maintenance when they were
(02:55):
very expensive too, when they first came out, so the
late eighteen hundreds, most to Americans, most people around the
world could not afford them. But in the early nineteen hundreds,
all of a sudden, they were able to reach a
point where they could produce them more cheaply. And so
you go from like four million phonographs and homes in
(03:15):
nineteen hundred to almost thirty million ten years later. And
and then a few years later we have radios, which
they didn't start to become more popular and affordable until
the nineteen twenties. And so you're just thinking, Okay, more
and more people can listen to music in their homes.
They can have parties and save money. They don't have
(03:37):
to go to concerts to listen to live music anymore.
They can actually just all gather around the phonograph. But
what was crazy is that even the record players were
becoming more affordable. By World War One, live music actually exploded.
It got more popular. That kind of makes sense because
(03:57):
if you have a record player and you buy a
record that you really love. Now you're like hooked on
this band or this artist and you're like, oh my god,
I would love to see this person live or this genre. Right,
because jazz also is this new genre, this exciting that's
entering the scene by that time, and that's why we
(04:18):
have this whole culture and this phenomenon. And today we've
got an expert, of course, to explain that phenomenon more specifically.
He's a musician in a big band orchestra, and he's
actually he leads a band based out of New York
City called the Nighthawks, and they specialize in nineteen twenties
and nineteen thirties style jazz music. Plus he's a music historian,
(04:43):
so he knows a lot about this. So we talked
to him about how like big bands were becoming a
mainstream thing beginning in in the early the late teens
to early nineteen twenties. Hi, this is Vince Jordano from
Vince Jordano and the Nighthawks starting in the late teens. Uh,
there's always been little combos pianos, but you had big bands,
(05:06):
Like when you went to see a silent film, you
had to have music to accompany the picture, and as
dance halls got bigger, you needed more musicians. You just
couldn't be there with a trio. You'd be lost in
this big dance hall. And people wanted big bands, so
you had by the nineteen twenties, the Roaring twenties, the
(05:28):
idea of a big band maybe twelve pieces. There were six,
some exceptions like Paul Whiteman who had something like twenty
two pieces. Uh, that's where it really started. I forgot that.
At one point there were silent films and the only
way that you a silent film could have a soundtrack
(05:49):
is if you actually had a live band in the
movie theater. Oh yeah, Like that's crazy to me, But
that makes so much sense, is that these silent films,
like you needed a musical accompaniment, and so they would
have a band in the movie theater. Like that's so
it's such a strange concept to me, but back then
it's that's all there was if you needed sound with
your movie. Everybody wanted to dance and socialize and get
(06:13):
out there, and this was the trend. They had some
extra extra time and money for the first time, and
jazz was it. I mean, jazz is like wrapped today.
It's it was the pop music of the time. So
a lot of folks thought that jazz music was actually
corrupting the youth. Jazz was a weird thing that happened
in the twenties. I mean they were articles, like written
(06:36):
newspapers and magazines saying the bad influence on jazz, how
this was leading to you know, staying out late, and
that young people are going to get corrupted, almost like
what happened when rock and roll came in thirty years later.
That's so funny and quaint. There might be an argument
to people saying, oh, the music is corrupting because of
(06:58):
the lyrics were talking about. He's talking about music that
didn't even have lyrics, being like, oh that chord progression,
it's just so dirty, it's so naughty. I think the
main thing was that it really was good at getting
people to dance and what this brought some some people
together and the young girls and the young boys got
(07:19):
together on the weekends and dance to this jazz music.
So I think that was really what they were afraid of.
You know, do you know what the music was, the
pop music before jazz, there really wasn't pop music before jazz,
unless you're talking like John Philip Sousa or like so
it was like classical. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, so they're
(07:41):
like they're jumping from like Beethoven, they're jumping from Beethoven
and Brahms too suddenly, like Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong. Yeah,
I could yeah, you know what, in that context, I
could see that, oh, this is so naughty, it's just
so different. I think that was a big thing too.
I could imagine. I always think about this too, like
(08:02):
somebody who was like the So I will always bring
up movies references, but I don't even care, like Back
to the Future again, Like the Back to the Future one,
he's rocking out on the guitar and the audience in
the nineteen fifties is just staring at and what the
hecks are doing to Yeah, I guess you're not ready
for that, but your parents or but your kids are
gonna love it. And that's the thing, Like it's just
(08:25):
jazz was such a radical departure from earlier styles of music.
But so yeah, these big band orchestra leaders, they were
the face of the jazz orchestra. So what were the
qualifications if you wanted to be a band leader, well,
first you had to be a musician. That's probably something
you would have guessed. Yeah, you had to be ambitious,
(08:45):
you had to be able to manage people. I think
a lot of it was just being able to form
a group and book shows. Everybody was trying to be
the most up to date, the hottest, the jazziest. Like
you had a brass section or maybe say two trumpets
and a trombone at your brass. Then you had three
saxophones that doubled on clarinets and other instruments, so that's
(09:09):
your sack section. And then you had your rhythm section
of a piano, a banjo, a drum, and either you
played tuba or string bass or bass saxophone, so that's
your rhythm section. Later on the music changed with like
i say, the swing era, and you added more brass
and more saxophones. The rhythm pretty much stayed the same,
(09:29):
but the tuba and the banjo went away to replace
with a string bass and the guitar to get a
smoother sound, and drum sets changed to you had ride
symbols and things like that. So the music that was
written in your store bought stock orchestrations would reflect uh
the size of the bands of that time. So you
(09:50):
had your banjo part and your tuba part, and and
the brass and the saxes, and you were able to
have a big band. It's so crazy because in modern
times you hear stories of like bands, the front man
or front woman of a band will be like, oh,
I started a band in high school, or I started
a band after college, and I was friends with the
(10:12):
guitarist and we put an ad on on dregslist for
a drummer, and that's how our band got together. But
that's three or four people. He's talking about hiring a
band of twelve to fifteen people, Like that's you want
to find a lot of people to who play a
lot of different instruments. So it's actually a big undertaking.
(10:33):
If you're a big band leader and you're the one
that has to find these fifteen people. One of them
plays a banjo, three of them play a trumpet. That's crazy,
And you can't just find a good banjo player on
any corner unless maybe you're in New Orleans maybe. But
and then like on top of that, you've got to
feed them and pay them make sure that they keep
coming back, because if they're not getting paid anything, it's
(10:54):
like okay, and where do you even find these people?
Because they didn't have Craigslist. No, you'd have to put
up flyers the old fashioned way up on the streets.
You'd have to network and talk to dance hall managers
(11:18):
and you have to be somebody who was very extroverted
and not afraid to just ask around. And I think
the hardest part was just getting the band started. And
now you have your band, Okay, so what skills are
needed to execute as a as a good big band
orchestra leader. Band leader became a end quote star really
(11:43):
from the nineteen twenties on the early twenties was the
advent of phonograph records and radio appearances and the press
that they got in the newspapers. And when people really
liked a band, well they just knew the band leader.
They didn't really care about the musicians in the band
(12:03):
around They were sort of secondary. Uh So this this
continued in uh in the twenties and thirties, and people
demanded what you did. You played the trumpet of a saxophone,
or you had a big band or a small band
people needed you and they liked you, and you were
(12:25):
sort of a star, you know, so to speak, maybe
in your own hometown or uh. In in a big band,
each band leader has his or her own way of
being the band leader. Some people are show people and
they do little gimmicks and uh get into a little comedy,
little ad lib. And some are very straightforward. They don't
(12:47):
do any kind of commercial uh gesturing. They'll they'll just
be either great musicians or maybe non musicians, but they
they're in front and leading the band in their own way.
That's so similar to the front person of a modern band.
Everyone knows the name of the lead singer of Maroo five,
(13:09):
but no one knows the rest of the band. No
one knows who else five, or like the Killers or
Radiohead or something like. You're very familiar with the lead singer,
but I don't. I couldn't tell you who the bassist
in Radiohead was. Is that Johnny Greenwood? No, I don't know.
I like that example, but no, yeah, like a lot
(13:31):
of it. You're right, A lot of bands have that
lead singer who ends up just having a solo career,
you know, like because of that, and it's the charisma
it's the commanding of a stage that I think those
qualities that are almost intangible sometimes. Yeah, and I know
a lot of people have been visioned when we when
we say like orchestra leader, they're just thinking like, oh yeah,
(13:54):
like he mentioned the baton, just like a conductor, like
actually keeping the beat. And but now lot of these
musicians were professionals. They could keep their own beats, so
really it was more for show. It wasn't like it
was like the big band leader really was just there
to kind of keep the show flowing and keep making
sure that the audience was still entertained, entertained, and I say, hey, guys,
(14:15):
I can I'm reading the audience right now, and I
think we need to go with this song instead of
this song. You know, I wonder if they I wonder
if they had the same like charisma with groupies, like
the way that the lead singer of My Room five
has groupies, or the lead singer of Radio had as groupies.
Like people like women like screaming their name in the
front room and be like, oh my god, he's so sexy.
(14:37):
I wonder if women back then were like look at
the way he plays that trumpet, Oh my god, he's
so hot. You know. That's an interesting thing because like,
you don't hear of the groupie phenomenon until later on
with Elvis and the Beatles. But it doesn't. That doesn't
mean it didn't. We didn't have people like that were
just like following these big band orchestra leaders around. Oh
(14:57):
he's so dreamy. You see the way he leaves a
van and then he started playing the trumpet. I bet
Benny Goodman was getting it. I don't know. I couldn't
tell you. He was definitely a good band leader, though,
I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, yeah,
he was getting it. Are you looking at a picture
of him right now? Should I be? I forgot what
he looked like, Benny good Man. I wonder if he
(15:24):
was American clarinetist. Oh the clarinet. That now that's a
hot instrument, Claire, we play that clarinet. Benny. Oh, he
was so nerdy and unassuming looking. But still if he
was like a hot in his heyday, a hot band lead,
I bet he was getting it. So what was a
typical day like for a band leader? Anywhere from two
(15:45):
to three hours early to set up all the equipment,
the chairs, the stands, the lights, the books, test the microphones,
put up a listing of tunes. Just making sure that
everything's working all those it's very mundane. Make sure all
the bulbs are working in the in the lamps that
are over the music stands, and occasionally there's things that
(16:06):
go wrong and the sound system goes out over the
one of the speakers. The was overused over the weekend
by the DJ and blew a couple of tweeters, And
so you're scuffling around to see how you're gonna make
this night work. And they were the band leader. That
was the whole position of this person's and and and
(16:28):
the others like Duke Gellington sat at the piano and
led the band. Occasionally would get up and direct a
certain ending or beginning. So you needed you needed a
band leader. When you had all these musicians around on
a given night, you'd have hundreds and hundreds of couples
all dancing, all syncopating or waltzing or doing some Latin
(16:52):
steps if if need be. And this was just part
of the whole social scene. It reminds me of when
you do here or about like modern bands and when
they first start out they're like, Oh, we had to
drive to the gig in a van and get there
early and set up all around equipment, and we were
our own roadies, and we had to put up flyers
(17:15):
ourselves to try to get people to come see us.
Like it was, it sounds very similar. This hits really
close to home. That's That's a big chunk of my
life was doing that and playing too in small venues
where ten people show up, but you're doing it all
and it is stressful, but you love it. Like you
think about it. There's so much time and effort that
goes into preparing and then a lot of times the
(17:36):
show itself is what thirty minutes. But I think the
difference with the big band leader like compared to like
a modern band is their mission is to get everybody
in the room dancing, And I don't think I ever
played a show where there was that many, like hardly
anybody dancing. You don't really care as much. It's not
your job. And then everybody in the room how to
be entertained, and I think that was what they made
(17:57):
sure of. It sounds like to me the big band
leaders of the time, like your job was a cross
between a modern dand rock band it's just starting out.
(18:20):
And also a DJ, like a club DJ, where people
come to see you and they're there to dance and
your job was to get them dancing and selling drinks
and stuff like that. Just got out of this horrendous
plague that was around the World War one time. There
was World War One, which was the war to end
all war supposedly, so it was the Victorian values of
(18:43):
the eighteen nineties, and the teens and young people just
didn't want to hear anything about that. They wanted to
dance the hot music. And because they were told that
they could not drink because it was prohibition, forget it.
They were going to drink and they got booze of
all sorts. Some of it was old stock before they
(19:06):
shut it down. Some people made their own booze, some
people smuggled it from Canada or from Cuba, and some
people got sick and got blind and died because of
this bad booze. So it was very high energy times.
I cannot believe that people went blind from that alcohol.
(19:28):
Yeah they did. That's actually where the term blind drunk
comes from, because people this is alcohol that was made
in homes, like a lot of times. It was made
in bathtubs and they had no idea how much alcohol
was in there, and it actually would for some people.
The toxin levels were so high that it could damage
(19:50):
the optic nerve. That's why, Yeah, WHOA. I have had
some strong drinks, but I guess I'm glad for I
guess I'm bucky that even as strong as the drinks
that I've had, at least they were regulated. I was
gonna say, are you are you pro prohibition? Should we
bring prohibition back? Legalized and regulated? So there were many
(20:12):
notable big band orchestra leaders, but I think the one
we're going to focus on in this episode is Paul Whiteman.
Have you heard of Paul Whiteman. I have not. I
hadn't either, and apparently he's a big freaking deal. Um,
Like a lot of standards were like he was responsible for.
So I always the site as Paul Whiteman as being
(20:33):
the first who really set the standards, and a lot
of the band leaders talk about him, guys that went
on to the thirties and forties, even fellows like Duke
Ellington and Count Basie and Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey,
they always talked about Paul Whiteman is sending a standard.
So how and why did the big band era end?
(20:53):
Really from the nineteen twenties on the early twenties with
the advent of phonographer records and radio appearances and the
press that they got in the newspapers, and when people
really liked a band, they just knew the band leader.
They didn't really care about the musicians in the band around.
(21:14):
They were secondary. So this this continued in the twenties
and thirties, and then eventually when the band vocalists started
to really take over, like fellows like Bing Crosby and
later on Frank Sinatra, then they became the big stars
and the band leader was secondary. Yeah. I could see
(21:36):
how if you're the quote unquote frontman of a band.
But then somebody like Frank Sinatra busts out and started singing,
you're no longer the star. Yeah, like if you're take
your clarinet and get back there. We don't need you anymore.
We have this hot singer dude. Especially when they're singing
(21:58):
words about of oh yeah, if they're crooning, that's really
going to get the ladies going. Another thing that developed
was better technology with phonograph records, and so like the
early phonograph records, as you mentioned at the beginning of
this episode, was like, you know, it sounded like it
was they were like three rooms away, really horrible quality sound,
(22:19):
but especially like with horns. And then but once that
technology got better, they're like, oh, you know what, this
actually sounds pretty good even in my living room now,
so I'm just gonna listen to this at home. And
but of course why would I listen to it in
my home? So in the nineteen thirties we also have
the Great Depression. You are so honest, Your history nous
(22:43):
is rubbing off on me. People have to make decisions
that were like, okay, do I eat this week or
do I go buy out or go to a dance hall,
And if you can't afford rice and beans, you're definitely
not affording it ticket to go see a big band.
In the middle of them depression, forget that. And if
(23:04):
they were lucky they did have a radio or some
kind of record player in the house, and then that
would take the place and so you could just dance
at home. Just felt differently, they didn't have to go
out dancing. Hundreds and thousands of people. People also started
to watch their money. They really I didn't want to
(23:24):
go out and spend money dancing. They were raising families. Eventually,
a new tech technology came into being, like television, where
even the movies suffered because people didn't go to the
movies like they used to. Yeah, but I feel like
technology is always going to be driving people home, because
(23:45):
the better the technology is for entertainment in your house,
the less you're going to want to go outside. Because
of Netflix and all the great streaming that I have, Like,
I hardly ever go to the movie theater anymore. And
if you if a ticket to see like your if
a ticket to see Beyonce cost five and seventy dollars,
which it does, then I'll just see the Beyonce concert
(24:06):
on HBO. Yeah. And by the time people did have
money again. So jump ahead to after World War Two.
We see by that time that there are established singers
and including Louis Armstrong, who I said earlier. People may
get it twisted that you know he was more of
a band leader, But no, I think he would at
(24:28):
at his peak of popularity, which he had a very
long career, but at his peak of popularity, he was
a singer and yeah, like and so there was no
stopping that. Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley just just yeahs out
of the bag. There ain't no there ain't no clarinetist
that's gonna go toe to toe with a hot crooner.
(24:52):
I'm sorry, take your trumpet and get go this step
step off with your trumpet. Sorry, Benny, But big band
leaders are still around today. Yeah. I was gonna say,
why are we talking about this as a job slete
if our expert himself is still doing the job today.
(25:12):
People still have nostalgia for this era, this jazz age,
and of course there's a market for that in certain places,
and so plenty of people show up in New York
for Vince's shows with his band. So the night Hawks
kind of fit that the demand for this. I think
that again, it's nostalgia, but it's also it's something that's
(25:32):
just wildly different than other forms of entertainment today. Yeah,
and it's probably as much as Vince and the Night
Hawks is a popular big band, he's probably one of
just a handful, whereas in it's heyday they were probably
like dozens and dozens. Yeah, Yeah, he's definitely stands out.
That's why we reached out to him. I guess it's
(25:52):
not completely job Slete, since we're our expert today is
actually doing this job, and from he described about his
day to day life, it sounds actually very similar to
the job that was done back in the day. But
I guess since job Salete in the sense that he's
probably one of only maybe ten or twelve people who
are doing the job, right. Yeah, I think the we
(26:15):
see the we see like this job and many different
jobs today, but we don't see it as like just
one position. Yeah, it's not like the average person in
the country is going, hey, what do you want to
do this weekend? Movies are a big band, so we
want to know who is your favorite big band orchestra leader.
And I can't hear you right now, so you're gonna
(26:37):
have to go on Twitter and and tell us there.
Tweet at us at job Sleet pod, and you can
find Vince at Vince Jordano dot com. Job Salete is
produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge
Podcasts for You. It's hosted by us Helen Hong That's
Me and Matt That's Me. The show was conceived and
(26:58):
produced by Steve's, Marky, Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our
editor is Tommy Nichol, our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our
production coordinator is Angie Hymes, and theme music is by
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. A special thanks to our I
Heart Radio team, Katrina Norvelle, Nikky Etre, Ali Cantor, Carrie Lieberman,
(27:21):
Will Pearson, Connal Byrne and Bob Pittman.
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