Dance Bands

Few recordings define the year-end holiday season as auspiciously as Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians' classic Now Is the Caroling Season from 1957. As one of the earliest full-length 12" Christmas albums, it became practically anthemic to generation upon generation of baby...

Violinist Jon Savitt was among jazz's more unusual characters. These are songs his dance band, the Top Hatters, cut in 1939, among them the hit tune "The Books." They also had vocalist Bon Bon, a.k.a. George Tunnell, who was among the first blacks to tour with a white orchestra. ~...

Les Elgart's two hit albums, The Elgart Touch (1956) and For Dancers Also (1957), are combined on this single disc issued by Collector's Choice. Both of the records climbed into the Top 15 on the album charts, and marked the peak of his popularity as a bandleader and performer. In...

Between 1995 and 1999, the Hep reissue label put together a series dedicated to four of Benny Goodman's best arrangers. Two volumes were devoted to Fletcher Henderson and one apiece focused upon Eddie Sauter, Mel Powell, and the great Jimmy Mundy (1907-1983), a tenor saxophonist whose...

Today Chick Webb is often remembered as the bandleader who gave Ella Fitzgerald her start, but in the 1930s Webb was considered one of the major drummers in jazz. Webb, whose band was featured at the Savoy, was a formidable force who led a top-notch swing band that always delighted dancers. His...

Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song, has been a household name ever since she had a hit with A-Tisket, A-Tasket in 1938. Her fame and abilities grew during the 1940s when she developed into one of the greatest of all scat-singers and she never lacked for work throughout her career. Her only...

Ted Weems is best known for having the hit "Heartaches" and leading a fine sweet-based ig band during the 1930s and '40s that during one period featured the vocals of Perry Como. However, in the 1920s, Weems' orchestra was the definitive dance band, performing everything...

Nice songs for background music, not-so-great sound quality. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide

Years before being established as the definitive mom & apple pie glee club, Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians were a combination sweet-to-hot dance band and vaudevillian variety show with glee club overtones. Nobody has gone through all of the Victor recordings made during the heyday of...

The T.O.M. label presents the second of two volumes devoted to Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. These 24 Victor recordings, made between January 1929 and November 1932, illustrate how this band had traded in most of its earlier collegiate identity for slicker presentation techniques and a...

The fourth volume in Jazz Oracle's Ben Pollack reissue program covers the period right after Benny Goodman and cornetist Jimmy McPartland had departed. They were soon replaced by clarinetist Matty Matlock and trumpeter Charlie Teagarden, but the main star throughout is trombonist/singer...

Fred Waring did not invent the sweet dance orchestra, the collegiate hot dance band, the glee club or the electric blender, but he did invest enough effort, time and money in each of these entities to revolutionize both popular entertainment and food processing during the 1920s, the Great...

Traditionally, the Jean Goldkette orchestra has been remembered mainly as an appendage of the Bix Beiderbecke story, as the short-lived cornetist shows up briefly at different junctures in the Goldkette discography. Perhaps this explains why the Timeless label's sampler of Goldkette's...

This excellent transfer of a pair of mid-'50s albums has no new annotation or information (some credits on the First American Tour! album would have been nice) but great sound. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

Ray Anthony's orchestra is heard serenading members of the United States Armed Forces on this Montpellier compilation of Navy Show Broadcasts from the early 1950s. Official government-employed radio announcers introduce some of the tunes, and the music ranges from good to excellent. This is...

Jan Garber & Orchestra. Decent, but hardly essential. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide

From 1925 until the early '40s, Nat Shilkret led studio orchestras on hundreds of dance band performances. Twenty-three of his more jazz-oriented selections from 1926-1930 are on this collector's CD including "Zulu Wail,"

In 2002 Renovation Records issued It Isn't Fair, a collection containing some of Richard Himber's earliest known recordings. Rarest of all, perhaps, is a medley of "Dancing on the Ceiling" and "Of Thee I Sing," dating from 1932. The other 24 vintage selections were...