[78-L] 1950s big bands

[Cary Ginell]

That's precisely my point. The orchestras were no longer the attraction. Popular mainstream music became personality-driven rather than song-driven. Most of the top singers from the '50s - Sinatra, Doris Day, Como, got their start as big band vocalists. Big bands became background musicians. All the examples you cite below are what I classify as instrumental groups, not big bands. None of those hits had vocals either. You are confusing "big bands" with "studio orchestras." There's a major difference between Benny Goodman in the '40s and Ray Conniff in the '60s. The difference is string sections, which is what drove most orchestral backing in the '50s and '60s. Only a few big bands of the '30s and '40s used strings (Artie Shaw tried it, but it didn't always work). Nelson Riddle, Percy Faith, Andre Kostelanetz, Hugo Winterhalter, Billy Vaughn - that was the new MOR. But those weren't big bands. The big bands of the '30s and '40s, which were diluted from the smaller, hotter bands of the late '20s and early '30s, were now diluted even further into what became known as "easy listening." 

 

Cary Ginell
 
> From: saag at telia.com
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:47:49 +0100
> Subject: Re: [78-L] 1950s big band (was Frosty)
> 
> David Lennick wrote:
> 
> > Nobody's saying they weren't popular, only that there were virtually no 
> > big
> > band hit singles after 1954. And I think we've listed the two exceptions.
> --
> There were more exceptions.
> Art Mooney reached the no 6 spot in the US 1955 with "Honey-Babe"
> Les Baxter no 2 in the US and no 10 in the UK 1955 with "Unchained Melody"
> Les Baxter no 10 in the US in 1955 with "Wake The Town And Tell The People"
> Perez Prado no 1 in the US and UK 1955 with "Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom 
> White"
> Billy May no 9 in the UK 1956 with theme from "The Man With The Gold Arm"
> Nelson Riddle no 1 in the US 1956 with "Lisbon Antigua"
> Les Baxter no 1 the US 1956 with "The Poor People Of Paris"
> Perez Prado no 2 in the US and no 8 in the UK 1958 with "Patricia"
> Ted Heath no 3 in the UK 1958 with "Swingin' Shepherd Blues"
> Reg Owen no 10 in the US 1959 with "Manhattan Spiritual"
> Ray Anthony no 8 in the US 1959 with "Peter Gunn"
> 
> And this was just Top 10.
> True: most of these weren't jazz tunes, not even jazz arrangements, but who 
> said Big Bands always played jazz music?
> Big Band arrangements though, were still commonplace on many, if not most 
> vocal hits of the 1950's. Who backed Jo Stafford, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como 
> and all the successful vocal quartets? It wasn't Bill Haley's Comets or The 
> Kingston Trio. Many of those hits would have been released under the 
> orchestra's name in the early 1940's.
> Kristjan 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 78-L mailing list
> 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390708/direct/01/