OSHER 201 - The Big Bands And The Swing Era, A Musical History

Big Band music was the most popular music in the United States during the Swing Era, a term interchangeable with the "Big Band Era." This course will analyze the emergence of big band jazz from early 1920s jazz. We will demonstrate "swing" and introduce many of the giant band leaders of the period, e.g. Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and more (hundreds of bands performed during the peak of the era). Many famous singers, e.g., Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, toured with these bands, and the course will cover these and instrumental soloists as time permits. A few bands dominated the big band scene for several years and affected the music scene profoundly with scores of "classic" dance and later concert songs. The course will focus mainly on those bands, as well as some of the extraordinary sidemen involved in them, plus many of the classic songs that are still performed today.