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Published: Thursday, 05 December 2024 at 17:58 PM
Best jazz band leaders: 11 ensemble leaders who changed the sound of big band jazz
Jazz has been shaped and defined by some of the most innovative and influential band leaders in music history. These artists not only pioneered new sounds and approaches but also led their ensembles to create groundbreaking music. Here’s an introduction to some of the best jazz band leaders who made indelible marks on the genre.
Best jazz band leaders ever
1. Count Basie
The Basie band took much of its character from the subtle way the Count’s pithy, elliptical attack framed his shouting brass and saxophones. More crucially, Basie’s touch set the tone for the band’s rhythm section; the light, insistent pulse that generated the irresistible current of swing that lifted soloists and ensemble to heights of inspired excitement.
That excitement hit the big time beginning in 1936, when the Basie crew came east from Kansas City (KC). Their success was based on a simple formula of creating in an ensemble the spontaneity and fire of small-group jazz. The key was the band’s line-up of great soloists, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans and trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry Edison.
Original tunes, uncomplicated but driving, provided a jumping-off point for solos backed by riffs which seemed a corporate extension of the solos themselves. And underpinning the whole was Basie and his floating, insinuating rhythm.
Count Basie: best recordings
April in Paris, King of Swing, Atomic Mr Basie & Basie Plays Joe Williams
Avid AMSC946
Ken Burns Jazz Collection: the Definitive Count Basie
Verve 549 0902
Chairman of the Board
Roulette 581 6642
2. Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway was a true jazz master of the revels. His exuberant personality overshadowed his reputation as leader of one of the best swing-era bands. Through the 1930s and ’40s, Calloway’s orchestra accompanied his outrageous vocal displays and boasted an array of talent: tenorist Chu Berry, drummer Cozy Cole, bassist Milt Hinton and trumpeters Jonah Jones and bebop enfant terrible Dizzy Gillespie.
But to the public, Calloway was the whole show. Arriving in New York in 1929 as leader of one group, he was invited to jump ship to another, a timely move that brought him, and his new ensemble, stardom. In 1931, they opened at Harlem’s Cotton Club, succeeded Duke Ellington as house band and began touring, boosting their following with recordings and films.
He was the king of showmanship, captivating audiences with his hyperactive energy and gleaming appearance. He wore immaculate, white, silk outfits and, later, outlandish zoot suits, with jackets draped down to the knees and pipe-stem trousers, crowned by a wide-brimmed hat.
We also named Cab Calloway one of the best jazz singers of all time.
Cab Calloway best recordings
This is Hep
Properbox 141 (4 discs)
Chu and Dizzy Years
Hep HEPCD1079
George Gershwin and Cab Calloway: Porgy and Bess
Metronome 232679
3. Duke Ellington
Since jazz is usually celebrated as an improvisor’s art, it may seem paradoxical that one of its major figures was a composer. Though Duke Ellington was a notable pianist, he declared, ‘My band is my instrument,’ and for over half a century he made it the medium of a peerless body of work.
Ellington’s lifelong companions were the members of his band – among them the gutbucket growls of trumpeters Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams, the arching sensuousness of altoist Johnny Hodges and the rumbling majesty of Harry Carney’s baritone.
As individual and sometimes contrary a set of virtuosos as ever shared a bandstand, he composed with these sounds and personalities in his head, writing specifically for them. And they provided the raw material for his astonishing originality in harmony and orchestration.
To many, Ellington may have been known for such lush popular hits as ‘Sophisticated Lady’, but his colleagues recognised an attainment of another order. As Miles Davis put it, ‘Some day all the jazz musicians should get together in one place and go down on their knees and thank Duke.’
Duke Ellington best recordings
Never No Lament – The Blanton-Webster Band
RCA 508572 (3 discs)
Duke Ellington Ken Burns Jazz
Sony 501 0342
Ellington at Newport: 1956
Sony C2K64932 (2 discs)
4. Benny Goodman
First he was nicknamed the ‘Rajah of Rhythm’, but by the summer of 1937 it would be as the ‘King of Swing’ that Benny Goodman would be forever known. Shortly after that, he was invited to perform with his band at Carnegie Hall in New York – a groundbreaking occasion, the invitation to this high altar of classical music effectively marked the acceptance of jazz right across US society.
The clarinet was Goodman’s instrument, and as a player he was as talented as he was versatile – classical composers who wrote works for him later in his career included the likes of Copland, Bartók and Poulenc. However, it was as one of the great jazz band leaders that he made his biggest mark on the music world.
Every bit as important as the Carnegie Hall performance was an earlier one, at the Palomar Ballroom, Los Angeles, in August 1935, that helped to usher in the era of swing which would hold the US in sway for the next decade. Whether with his big band, his trio, quartet or sextet, a string of seminal records for RCA Victor and Columbia followed.
Benny Goodman best recordings
Benny Goodman live at Carnegie Hall, 1938
Avid AMBX151 (4 discs)
The Benny Goodman Story
Capitol CDP8335692
Benny Goodman: The Essential Collection
Avid AVC864 (2 discs)
5. Lionel Hampton
For Lionel Hampton, swing was the thing. All his life, he brought an unquenchable rhythmic dynamism to every musical setting – big band or combo, as vibraphonist, drummer, two-finger pianist, singer and leader. Joining Benny Goodman in 1936, he turned the elegant Goodman trio into an exuberant quartet. Hamp’s vibes were a coruscating powerhouse, a kind of riffing machine hammering out licks which drove Goodman to inspired heights. The Hampton persona was irresistible, too – mallets flailing in sweaty abandon, spurring himself on with bleats of encouragement, the jazz musician possessed.
Hampton was snapped up by RCA Victor, which gave him carte blanche to organise a series of small-group recording sessions in 1937-40. The result was a set of casually perfect classics, as the greatest stars of the swing era responded to his vitality.
That blend of energy, precision and engagement set the tone for the success of the big band Hampton began to lead when he left Goodman in 1940, continuing to tour and record until not long before his death in 2002. His first hit, ‘Flying Home’ from 1942, established its style – a potent extended tenor solo, screaming trumpets, Hamp’s throbbing vibes and a focused, churning swing.
Lionel Hampton best recordings
The Lionel Hampton Story
Properbox 12 (4 discs)
Air Mail Special
Metronome 223999
Lionel Hampton: Live at the Blue Note
Telarc CD83313
More of the best jazz band leaders of all time
6. Woody Herman
Some jazz lovers are sniffy about big bands. Aside from Ellington and Basie, they doubt that regimented sections playing prescribed parts can deliver jazz’s spur-of-the-moment spirit, its famous ‘sound of surprise’. Which may account for a certain condescension towards Woody Herman. Big bands were his life: for over 50 years he propounded the excitement of orchestral jazz, touring until his death in 1987. To the legions of musicians who revered his commitment and high standards, he was known as ‘Road Father’.
Clarinettist, saxophonist and singer, Herman led from the front. But his crucial role was as enabler, inspiring players and writers to energy and daring, with the results which leap out of the four-CD Properbox set The Woody Herman Story. Though Herman’s 1930s group, The Band That Plays The Blues, won admiration, it was his First Herd, roaring into life in 1944, that catapulted him to greatness.
Bursting with talent and reflecting the youthful optimism of Amercica at the end of World War II, this extraordinary ensemble seemed to project total euphoria. Musically, it was on the cusp of bebop, but its credo was swing to the max. Its rampant trumpet section – whose average age was 22 – set the tone, tossing off blinding feats of range and facility which they had apparently thought up on the spot.
Woody Herman best recordings
The Woody Herman Story
Properbox 15 (4 discs)
That’s Where It Is
Sounds of Yesteryear DSOY 845
7. Earl Hines
A few years ago a correspondent to Radio 3’s Jazz Record Requests described Earl Hines as ‘underplayed, largely unavailable and probably underestimated’. It’s a fair summary of a situation that, in the 1930s, would have been unthinkable.
Then, Hines was riding high, the king of the keyboard, a byword for invention, technique, daring and dazzlement – the man who turned piano playing into a kind of Olympic event, inspiring a whole generation.
A groundbreaking series of recordings, both solo and with his fellow trailblazer, Louis Armstrong, catapulted him to fame in the ’20s. Through the ’30s and ’40s, Hines led a big band, which, in its latter days, included such bebop pioneers as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1948, he joined forces with Armstrong again, as a member of Louis’s All-Stars, and then in the ’50s he went off on his own.
Musical fashion restricted Hines to the well-trodden paths of Dixieland, and by 1960, he was thinking of retiring. But in 1964, a sensational set of solo concerts in New York put him back on top, where he stayed, playing with authority until his death in 1983, short of his 80th birthday.
Earl Hines best recordings
The Earl: Recordings 1928-41
Naxos Jazz Legends 8.120581
Earl Hines plays Duke Ellington
New World 803612 Vol. I (2 discs)
Earl Hines Classic Trio Sessions
Lone Hill Jazz LHJ 10329
8. Louis Jordan
Rhythm-and-blues (R&B) is jazz’s cheeky, party-time younger brother. It evolved as a distinct genre in the late 1930s and ’40s, created by small jump bands whose free-wheeling energy contrasted with the grandiosity of the big swing orchestras.
Though the catchy R&B formula can claim varied ancestry, a major impetus came from the irrepressible Louis Jordan. Born in 1908, the saxist-singer learned his trade with his father’s Arkansas minstrel show, instilling a life-long instinct for entertainment. In New York, his personality made an impact with Chick Webb’s band. Too much, in fact: Webb sacked Jordan in 1938 for upstaging him and trying to poach his stars.
Ever the showman, Jordan decided that his group’s feature would be a set of kettledrums; and thus was born his Tympany Five. Though the timps soon departed, their name and eccentric spelling remained, signifying a potent, highly polished, infectious brand of musical entertainment that took large sections of the US by storm.
In the years during and after World War II, he won popularity with a stream of recordings that revelled in a lithe, pulsating groove which demanded that you dance, with slick, pithy arrangements, and a repertoire of good-time tunes tailor‑made for his vocals.
Louis Jordan best recordings
Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five
JSP JSPCD905 (5 discs)
Louis Jordan: Jack, You’re Dead
SPVBlue SPV49432
9. Glenn Miller
On 15 December 1944, Glenn Miller’s single-engined UC-64 Norseman aircraft disappeared over the English Channel on a flight from Bedford to Paris, bringing his life to an end at the age of 40 years old. The Iowa-born Miller, a trombonist, composer, arranger and, above all, leader of arguably the best known big band in the world, was at the peak of his career at the time.
Founded in 1938, Glenn Miller and his Orchestra achieved their distinctive sound by having the clarinet and a saxophone double up on the melody, supported by three further saxes playing in harmony. Over the next six years, they released 266 recordings, many reaching No. 1 in the US charts, including ‘In the mood’, ‘Tuxedo Junction’ and, perhaps most famously of all, ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’. In 1942, Miller signed up for military service and was eventually transferred to Army Airforces, but continued to make music as the founder of the Army Air Force Band.
Though some critics thought some of his performances gimmicky and his Orchestra’s sound a little too polished, he enjoyed a popularity that was second to none.
10. Maria Schneider
In 2005, a rare London concert by Maria Schneider attracted an audience so packed with top-flight jazz professionals that a cataclysm would have decimated the British scene. But it was no more than fitting for a musician hailed in America as ‘the most significant big-band jazz composer of our time’.
The ‘big band’ label hardly does justice to Schneider’s output. Arriving in New York in 1985 from university, the 25-year-old Minnesotan worked with two great mentors – Bob Brookmeyer, from whom she absorbed a sense of shape and structure, and Gil Evans, who enhanced her sensitivity to colour and texture. But her ears and inspiration are her own, enabling her, as she says, to develop a ‘way of making a big band sound like an orchestra’.
Chief among the Schneider hallmarks is a gift for sonorities that are rich and transparent, with a piquancy that comes from unexpected voicings, using brass and reeds in combinations that make them sound altogether new. They’re the perfect setting for her soaring melodies and harmonies, quickened by a rhythmic feeling which links momentum and metrical subtlety.
Maria Schneider best recordings
Sky Blue
ArtistShare AS0065
Evanescence
Enja ENJ 80482
Coming About
Enja ENJ 90692
11. Sun Ra
Despite his cosmic claims, Sun Ra was born plain Herman Blount in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1914, to an African-American family of modest means. He quickly displayed remarkable musical and intellectual gifts, and by the age of 20 he was leading his own band. Not long after, he had a vision of his extraterrestrial origins, later compounded with a fascination for ancient Egypt as the source of Afro-European culture.
In 1952, he proclaimed his true roots by changing his name to Le Sony’r Ra and formed his own Space Trio, the core of his first Arkestra. Musicians were drawn to him by his charisma, at once down home and far out, stretching their minds and talents. An Arkestra gig was meant to be a brilliant extravaganza, bringing together music, poetry, theatre and dance. Garbed in gorgeous robes, spangled headdresses, masks and gaudy plumage, the band delivered Ra compositions that celebrated space and time, peace and hope, and joyous energy.
Over the years, until his death in 1993, Sun Ra pioneered techniques from electronics to collective improvisation. At the same time, blues and swing are never far away, as you can hear on his most accessible album, Jazz in Silhouette. Recorded in 1958, it includes mystic visions, subtle lines and colours, non-stop grooves and exhilarating solos. And we share the whole experience, since, in Sun Ra’s words, ‘You’re all just instruments, in this vast Arkestra called life’.