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I8O THE INSTRUMENTS, THE SOUNDS, THE PERFORMERS
numbers followed the general pattern o£ the Henderson and Redman bands, with Edgar Sampson of the sax section as chief arranger; many of the biggest Sampson-Webb hits, notably Storrvpiri at the Savoy, Blue Lou, If Dreams Come True and Dont Be That Way, were later popularized more widely by the Goodman band.
Earl Hines, from 1928 until 1948, led a band that was important for the gifted sidemen that it produced rather than for any individual style. Best known in the '30s for its radio theme, Deep Forest, and for the leader's own composition, Rosetta, the Hines band was to evolve in the early '40s into a virtual cradle of the bop movement.
A King Oliver dynasty began when the Oliver band, gradually enlarged from combo to orchestra dimension, came to New York and Luis Russell, Oliver's pianist, led a band composed mainly of ex-Oliver sidemen. In turn, Teddy Hill, who had played tenor sax with Oliver and Russell, formed a band of his own that had some popularity in the East from 1935 to '40. The Oliver and Russell bands included Barney Bigard on clarinet and J. C. Higginbotham on trombone; among Hill's sidemen were Roy Eldridge on trumpet, Chu Berry on tenor sax, and later Dizzy Gillespie.
Benny Carter was a bandleader when economic conditions allowed it during most of the 1930s, but like many of his contemporaries he was more important for his mastery of the pen and the horn than for his control of the baton and was therefore discussed elsewhere. Cab Calloway's band, fronted by the Tbri-de-ho" scat singer, offered an acceptable pastiche of popular music, pre-swing and competently arranged jazz.
In Kansas City during the late *20s and early *30s the bands of Andy Kirk, in which the piano and arrangements of Mary Lou Williams lent an incandescent touch, and of Benny and Buster Moten, with Count Basie and Jimmy Rushing often featured, adumbrated a style that was to be illuminated fully in the great Basie band that came to New York in 1936.
The Kansas City tradition was later continued by Jay McShann, the Oklahoma-born pianist. Like many bands from his area, McShann placed a heavy accent on arrangements built around |
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