Skip to main content

The Swing Era

March 2023
1min read

The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945

by Gunther Schuller; Oxford; 919 pages .

In a footnote deep in this monumental jazz history, the author remarks that “jazz-writing and criticism, even more than classical music, is a field rampant with hotly contested judgments and acrimonious feuding between writers who have staked out territories they possessively consider their private domains of expertise.” Indeed, the jazz experts have had a field day picking at the strengths and weaknesses of this book. But they all agree that it is a milestone, perhaps the most important single history of jazz yet written, and by an author who seems to stand above the usual battling. Schuller is not only a jazz historian but also a respected jazz player, a prominent orchestral conductor, a noted composer, the longtime head of the New England Conservatory of Music, and a scholar of the music of several centuries. His breadth and depth of knowledge is unmatched and his musicality unquestioned.

This volume follows an earlier, much slimmer one on the pre-swing era; the author now promises a third book that will complete the cycle, covering jazz from 1945 to today. His focus in The Swing Era is principally on the big bands. His organization is encyclopedic: He starts with chapters on Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong and their bands and follows with sections on lesser big bands, great soloists, and small groups, with the result that the book is as useful as a reference as it is as a narrative history. Look up Nat King Cole and you can trace in nine pages his important work as a pathbreaking jazz pianist before his great popularity as a vocalist eclipsed that achievement. Or turn to the section on Earl Hines and follow his influence and adaptability as a bandleader and piano player from the mid-thirties right up to the seventies.

Throughout the book Schuller integrates technical detail, nontechnical musical description and criticism, discussion of individual recordings, and the larger historical picture. For example, he describes with some precision what Frank Sinatra brought to popular singing that was entirely new—his phrasing, his vocal quality, his ability to stretch slow tempos. He discusses how Sinatra’s talent grew during his years with Tommy Dorsey, how his unprecedented success helped put a whole new emphasis on the solo singer in popular music, and how this emergence of the popular singer in turn became one of the nails in the coffin of the big-band era. All this takes about two absorbing pages out of nine hundred.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "September/October 1989"

Authored by: Avis Berman

American art was hardly more than a cultural curiosity in the early years of this century. Now it is among the world’s most influential, and much of the credit belongs to a self-made woman named Juliana Force.

Authored by: Robert Bendiner

A lifelong baseball fan recalls his early days and explains the rewards of abject loyalty

Authored by: The Editors

A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement

Authored by: The Editors

The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945

Authored by: Geoffrey C. Ward

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s honeymoon was a lavish grand tour through a sunny, hospitable Europe. It was also filled with signs of the mutual bafflement that would one day embitter their marriage.

Authored by: Robert L. O’connell

The urge to move documents as fast as possible has always been a national pre-occupation, because it has always been a necessity. Fax and Federal Express are just the latest among many innovations for getting the message across.

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

Often thought to have been a weak President, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or political fallout.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.