26 July 2008
The King of Jazz
Paul Whiteman led the most successful 1920s dance band
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
The most successful dance band of the 1920s was the Ambassador Orchestra, led by Paul Whiteman. Whiteman’s role in the history of jazz is ambiguous. On the one hand, he promoted a watered-down, “safe” version of jazz to the public. On the other hand, Whiteman did make some important contributions, widening the market for jazz-based dance music (and paving the way for the Swing Era), hiring brilliant young jazz players and arrangers, and establishing a level of professionalism that was widely imitated by dance bands on both sides of the color line. He also defended jazz against its moral critics (whom he called “jazz-klanners”) and carried on aspects of the brilliant African-American musician Jim Europe’s vision of a symphonic version of jazz. (The 1924 debut of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featured Whiteman’s band.)
The Ambassador Orchestra, which comprised only 10 players in 1920, had expanded to 19 by the end of the decade (five brass instruments, five reed instruments, four violins, and a five-piece rhythm section). In 1927 Whiteman began to hire some of the leading white jazz musicians of the time, including the brilliant cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and the Dorsey brothers (Jimmy and Tommy), who would later achieve success as bandleaders in the Swing Era. At concerts and dances he used a small “band-within-a-band,” made up of the best jazz musicians in his orchestra, to play “hot” music. Whiteman hired pioneering dance band arrangers – Ferde Grofé and Bill Challis – to craft his band’s “book” (library of music), and he helped to promote jazz-influenced crooners such as Bing Crosby.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
