The Swing Book Read Online Free PDF

really propelled swing, however, was jitterbugging, the new name that the Lindy Hop acquired as it was embraced
     by an increasing number of white dancers. Back in the thirties, the jitterbug could scare the establishment just as much as
     Elvis’s pelvis did two decades later. Newspaper accounts used words such as
frenzy, pandemonium,
and
ecstasy
to describe the phenomenon. And one psychologist ominously warned of the “dangerously hypnotic influence of swing, cunningly
     devised to a tempo faster than seventy-two bars to the minute—faster than the human pulse.” In 1938 the swing era even had
     its own Woodstock, a swing jamboree in Chicago featuring Jimmy Dorsey and Earl Hines that drew 100,000 fans. It was described
     by the
Chicago Daily Times
as “the most hysterical orgy of joyous emotions by multitudes ever witnessed on the American continent.” But let the observers
     make their pronouncements. For the dancers themselves, there was an unparalleled connection being made between themselves
     and their fave bands. “Really, as a musician you did it as much for the dancing as you did for the music,” said Count Basie
     singer Joe Williams in Norma Miller’s
Swingin’ at the Savoy.
“All of that was together at one time, it was one great communication …; the dancers inspired the musicians and vice versa.”
    Swing also began to be taken much more seriously as an art form. In the twenties Paul Whiteman, the leader of one of the most
     popular dance bands, attempted to put jazz on the same level as European classical music, labeling his endeavor “symphonic
     jazz.” Yet even in the thirties, jazz still was considered a more lowly form of music. “In those days people thought if you
     were playing jazz, you were stepping down,” Artie Shaw told writer Fred Hall in
Dialogues in Swing.
But the pioneers of swing demanded to be accepted on their own terms. And the pinnacle of this push occurred on January 16,
     1938, when Goodman’s orchestra made a landmark appearance at Carnegie Hall. On that historic night, tension was high. The
     band members were a bit overawed by the grand symphony space and got off to a tepid start. But soon they began to play in
     the same way they would let loose in the most informal dance hall. Drummer Gene Krupa beat the drums like a dervish, his hair
     flying, sweat dripping. Members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington orchestras made guest appearances. And Goodman’s integrated
     quartet played the most well-received numbers of the night, with Lionel Hampton’s rhythmic masterpieces on the vibraphones
     thrilling the crowd. By the time the band went into its closing number, “Sing, Sing, Sing,” the crowd was crying out and applauding
     in a state of near delirium. It was an epochal success. “Carnegie Hall was always known as the holy of the holiest,” recalls
     Hampton. “No jazz had ever come near there.”
    That concert was only the first half of what was easily the most magical night ever witnessed in swing. As soon as the Carnegie
     Hall show ended, members of the Goodman band raced uptown to Harlem to catch another singular event. Count Basie, the newcomer
     from Kansas City, was taking on Chick Webb, the king of the Savoy, in a battle of the bands. Basie’s sound represented a new
     approach to swing. Injecting the blues of the Southwest into the big band format and perfecting a propulsive four-beats-to-the-bar
     rhythm that moved the music along like never before, Basie’s band was a direct challenge to the sounds of Harlem. Compared
     with the complex arrangements of bands like Webb’s, Basie’s songs were stripped to their essential elements, touching the
     simple beating heart as much as the head. The crowd—which included Ellington; vibraphonist Red Norvo and his wife, singer
     Mildred Bailey; and Goodman—was relishing the face-off. If that wasn’t enough, Ella Fitzgerald, Webb’s singer, and Billie
     Holiday, Basie’s vocalist, also squared off