Please suggest artist.

[gramophone-georg]

I kind of assumed that I didn't like Big Band/Swing but I guess that I have to admit that I didn't give it a chance out of prejudice.

Hey, it's all a learning process. What you have heard of it in the past was probably all the sappy stuff that sold well due to there being a war on for the latter half of the Swing Era and that's what sold the best.

I guess that's my mistake too. I don't think of 1930-36 or so as the swing era at all, even though the music was evolving toward swing -- to me it's basically just 1937-42, and a short revival on the other side of the recording ban, and defined by somewhat softer instrumentation (fewer jazz solos, more big band work), an increasing emphasis on vocal refrains, toward ballads, and moderate, danceable tempo compared to hot jazz. Before and after that, or missing those characteristics, it's jazz.

(And then there's things like Benny Goodman's Carnegie Hall show in 1938, the heart of the swing era, by swing's biggest exponents, but sounding at least to me like mostly pure jazz, with a few swing songs thrown in as crowd pleasers)

What is the "accepted" definition of swing anyway?

Actually, swing is jazz! It's the "sweet" and "pop" stuff that is miscategorized as swing. The problem is that we automatically assume that everything from "the swing era" is swing.

Swing goes back to the Twenties. It was a well known idiom in Harlem. "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" is an Ellington tune from 1931 that gives homage to something already established.

[CMcPherson]

Thanks for adding your opinion to the thread Wolfe.