Society Dance Band

While the first two volumes in Sunbeam's excellent Bix Beiderbecke retrospective focused on the great trumpeter's early sides and solos, showcasing his abilities as a rising soloist, the music on Bix Restored, Vol. 3, with it's astonishing variety of textures and tempos, reveals...

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...

Dutton Vocalion's Ray Noble retrospective inches inexorably onward with this parcel of 24 recordings made for the HMV label between October 1933 and February 1934, heavily featuring crooner Al Bowlly as well as vocalists Eve Becke and Dawn Davis. This is British dance band music from the...

The first two decades of the 20th century were a time of great change for jazz -- in 1902, agtime was just beginning to be acknowledged as a force on popular music, and by 1923 the Jazz Age was in full flower. Although jazz did not debut on record until 1919 with the first recordings of the...

Nostalgia is a key ingredient in this twin piano session pairing Dick Hyman and John Sheridan, performing popular novelty tunes of the 1920s and 1930s. This genre of music was so named because of the little flourishes added by their composers to bring attention to them, which of course they did....

Drummer Art Hickman's orchestra of 1919-1920 is often cited in jazz history books as being among the first dance orchestras to incorporate jazz rhythms and repertoire in its music, and it is sometimes cited as the first ig band to use a saxophone section. Hickman's band, which...

The first jazz-oriented orchestra to feature a saxophone section, predating Paul Whiteman, was led by Art Hickman in San Francisco during 1917-1921. Until Archeophone reissued nearly all of Hickman's recordings on two CDs, his orchestra's performances were completely unavailable for...

Paul Whiteman's versatile orchestra was well suited to carry out his symphonic approach to jazz, and while he didn't exactly manage to tame the beast and turn it into uptown classical, his 1920s and 1930s recordings did show that jazz was capable of carrying a then previously unheard...