专辑简介

After the disheartening weeks in 1946 when half a dozen of the biggest bands in the business broke up, there seemed to be no future for swing. Bands reformed themselves but it was not the same. New idols and new kinds of jazz were pushing into the spotlight. Theaters no longer hired bands due to TV competition. Radio had been usurped by disc jockeys who did not need live bands. People did not dance to jazz any more. And musicians returning from military service found it hard to get jobs.

The competition for jobs helped swing in that leaders had their pick of sidemen and the bands recovered a quality lost during the war. Cautiously, at first but then more eagerly, the harmonies and rhythms of the new jazz were intertwined into their music thus keeping swing from becoming merely an echo of itself. There was more precision and polish with the more mature musicians. The swing of the decades after the war was a refreshing variety of styles and contain a fullness. Jazz was no longer in the running as mass music, however, as rock became popular. Swing rather settled into place as one of the many forms - bop, cool, modern, progressive - that jazz developed. Jazz no longer reigned but it was and still is - swing.