The golden age of Swing.
This hour, we go back to the big band era. Big bands, sometimes thirty or forty strong, played the pop music of the thirties and forties.
Young people flocked to performances by swing stars such as Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Charlie Barnet, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.
The latter looked like a freeze-dried accountant. But that did not prevent him from unleashing the ‘Swing era’ in 1934, when, at the end of a difficult concert series, he decided to play the boisterous swing arrangements of Fletcher Henderson.
Not only did the dance hall suddenly explode at the seams, but because of the radio broadcast from the same Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, all America that night became under the spell of swing music. It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing,’ as it was called in one of Duke Ellington’s compositions.
In short, an hour of highlights from the great years of the big bands.
Produced & presented by: