The Swing/Big Band Era: 1935-1946

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 I tried to get the colour of the background to this post in such a way as to make my post visible to readers, but could not figure-out how. Apologies! Readers can read the post if they simply highlight the background themselves.-Ron-------------------------------------------------
SWING

...one view of the history of jazz
Part 1:

Jazz was a 2000 documentary miniseries, directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001 just after I had retired from a 50
year student-and-employment life, 1949 to 1999. The chronological and
thematic episodes of the series provided a history of jazz emphasizing innovative composers and musicians as well as American history.  It was an
interpretation of the history of jazz rooted in biography.

I have seen the series twice during the years
2004 to 2014 on television in Tasmania Australia. Jazz has always been on the
periphery of my musical experience since the earliest days of my life in the
1940s. This series brought jazz closer to the centre of my life, although I
was not waiting for this to occur.

Part
2:

Swing musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are the central figures in
the series.  "They provide the
narrative thread around which the stories of other major figures turn"; several episodes discuss the contributions
of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to bebop,
and of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane to free  and cool jazz.  Nine episodes
survey the forty-five period (1917–1961), leaving the final episode to cover
the forty years from 1961 to 2001.  The
impact on jazz of racial segregation and drugs is discussed.¹ Like all histories of all subjects, there
are many ways of writing the story. 
Ken Burns and his crew gave viewers one of these ways of dealing with
a century of jazz. Many enthusiasts were waiting for Burns' take on jazz
knowing, as many did, that Burns is one of the best doco producers.

Part 3:

The swing
era, also frequently referred to as the "big band era", was
the period of time from about 1935 to 1946.  During this period big band swing music was the most popular music in the United States. Though this was its most popular period, the music had actually been
around since the late 1920s and early 1930s, being played by black bands led by
such artists as Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford, Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, and Fletcher Henderson. There were also the white bands from the 1920s
led by the likes of Russ Morgan and Isham Jones. The era's beginning is sometimes dated from Benny Goodman's performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on 21 August 1935 bringing
the music, as it did, to the rest of the country.²By the last half of 1935, millions
waited for the next war only four years away.-Ron Price with thanks to ¹Wikipedia,
and ²Scott Yanow and Paul Du Noyer, The
Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music, first edition, Fulham, London: Flame
Tree Publishing, 2003, p.128. 

Part 4:

I could not help but see
the remarkable tie-in, a
synchronization, betwix
the origins, development
of the Baha'i teaching &
administration programs
with the history of jazz 
going right back to 1917!¹

This was especially true
of Benny Goodman in a
performance at Palomar
in Los Angeles, the same
time as the Baha'is of the
USA and Canada planned 
their first systematic Plan 
to implement those Tablets 
after a hiatus of twenty years,
in the year 1937 and the Plan
went to '44 with two years of 
waiting to begin the next Plan.

Those last 40 years to 2001,
the beginning of a new 21st
century, and the opening of 
those Terraces on Mt Carmel 
just topped that amazing and
wondrous synchronization 
beginning in 1917 with the
revelation of those Tablets.¹

¹Abdul-Baha completed His writing of the Tablets of the Divine Plan
in 1917.  Those Tablets were the
foundation document for the Baha'i teaching program organized within and by
Baha'i Administration.  It is a program I
have now been associated with for more than 60 years.

Ron Price
 30/5/'14
and 2/11/'14.

Edited by RonPrice - 27 Jan 2015 at 5:13pm