Woody Herman – Charlie Barnet
Two more marshals from the epic saga of running a big band in years of plenty, then the paucity of an ice-age in the post war demise of swing, as the ballroom favourites of jive and lindy hoppers started to wane. Still, these never say die cats continued their love affair with symphonic swing. Woody’s clarinet and alto, sawed through a number of his ‘Herds’, while Barnet bruised his tenor around the echo chambers of Ellington’s ‘diminuendo and crescendo’ playbook. Both bands were inoculated with the Blues and played for fun in the face of economic adversity.
They reached out to millions until they became thousands but being inveterate romantics both, they never gave up living the dream, irrepressible in their dedication and commitment for making musical whoopee. The world would have been a sadder place without the tribal rites of these two pied pipers of swing who attracted in their careers the most eclectic band of brothers and mothers over two eras that included John Kirby, Frankie Newton, Billy May, Lena Horne, Marmarosa, Hefti, Trummy Young, Kessel, Clark Terry and DeFranco from the Barnet ensembles and Bill Harris, Flip Phillips, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Serge Chaloff from the Herds of Herman.