© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
The big band era
largely blossomed during the decade of the 1930’s bringing the Swing Era into
existence.
The circumstances
of the World War II [1939-1945], including the recruitment into the armed
forces of many of the musicians who played in them, essentially ended the era
of big bands. The economics of the postwar era also had a great deal to do with
their demise.
But those who experienced
the heyday of the big bands, never forgot the pleasure they derived from
listening and dancing to them.
Everyone had their
favorites: Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Harry James.
Some fans were such avid followers that they even knew the names of who held
down the 3rd trumpet chair in their favorite band.
Every so often, a
big band would come along that wasn’t a huge commercial success, but one that
nevertheless developed a close following for the quality of its music.
Such was the case
with Bob Crosby’s Orchestra and the small band embedded in it which he called –
The Bobcats.
My Dad was one
such Bob Crosby fan and when I discovered his stash of Decca 78 rpm’s of the
band and asked him about them, he simply said: “You’ll like listening to them;
they were The-Best-of-The-Best!”
Richard Sudhalter
offers some reflections on why the Bob Crosby aggregations were thought of so
highly in the following excerpts from his seminal Lost Chords: White Musicians and
Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945 [New York: Oxford, 2000, pp.
382-384, excerpted].
“Above all," [bassist]
Bob Haggart recalled, "we were like a family. We worked together,
socialized together. Thought musically together. Most other bands—well, to tell
the truth, we didn't pay much attention to what everybody else was doing. To us
most of the time, they just sounded as if they were trying to steal from one
another."
Meet that wonder
of the musical 1930s, the Bob Crosby Orchestra. In the whole colorful decade
there wasn't another band like it, and in certain ways there may not have been
another nearly so good.
For chronicler
George T. Simon, they were an ensemble "with tremendous spirit, one filled
with men who believed thoroughly in the kind of music they were playing and,
what's more, who respected and admired one another as musicians and as
people."
Few bands, however
brilliant, approached that degree of unanimity with any consistency. It extends
beyond mere skill, beyond originality—even beyond a leader or arranger's
inspired vision. Neither Benny Goodman's virtuosity nor the faultless precision
of his orchestras ever quite transformed their efforts into the expression of a
single collective will. Artie Shaw came closer, his various bands driven by the
strength and singularity of his vision: but Shaw's musicians remained his
employees. Much the same could be said even for Red Norvo's extraordinary 1937
band, breathing, whispering, exulting as extensions of both its leader's
xylophone sound and Eddie Sauter's ensemble concept.
The Crosby orchestra had an extra dimension. It lives
in such words as "ensemble," when describing tightly knit group
acting, or "team," in the finest athletic sense; the idea of a
collective entity, each component interacting constantly and creatively with
the others to shape, to determine the whole. Gestalt, a single consciousness
compounded of many.
In that rarified
context only the Duke Ellington Orchestra comes to mind as in any way
comparable. But an Ellington orchestra, any Ellington orchestra, assumed its
finished shape through the leader's (and often Billy Strayhorn's) codification
of an ongoing fusion and fission among its individual members. The Crosby orchestra, by contrast, began with
unanimous, shared dedication to a single stylistic ideal. Its name, most often
popularly (and imperfectly) identified, I was "dixieland." But the
word fails to describe either a stylistic predisposition or a rhythmic
foundation, not to mention a wide palette of orchestral color and texture.
Better by far, and
more accurate, to remember that the band led by Bing Crosby's younger brother
was built around a core of New Orleans musicians, whose shared background and
affinity determined its musical direction.
Historically, New Orleans jazzmen away from home shared a bond, a camaraderie,
that seemed to transcend class, education, politics, even race. Meeting in New York , Chicago , or Los Angeles , they were often simply homeboys together,
carrying their environment with them in a way that seemed to render differences
among them irrelevant, or at least secondary. It may be that way with i
musicians from St. Louis , Boston , or San Antonio , but not to that degree; and on the evidence it's anything
but that with New Yorkers. …
Whatever it was,
and by whatever name its music was known, the band had sparkle, spontaneity,
and lift and left a legacy of distinctive records, which have easily withstood
the shifting winds of musical fashion.”
Here is an
audio-only track to help afford you with a sampling of the Bob Crosby
Orchestra’s style of music.