A few years ago a `` Timex All-Star Jazz Show '' offered a broad range of styles, ranging from Lionel Hampton's big band to the free-wheeling Dukes Of Dixieland.

Several times it came near breaking, and there were in fact some lovely peals of thunder from Jerry Mulligan's big band, which is about as fine an aggregation as has come along in the jazz business since John Hammond found Count Basie working in a Kansas City trap.

Mulligan's band has been infected with his solid sense of swing, and what it does seems far more meaningful than most of the noise generated by the big concert aggregations.

Divided almost equally into two parts, it consisted of `` The Evolution Of The Blues '', narrated by Jon Hendricks, who had presented it last year at the Monterey, Calif., Jazz Festival, and an hour-long session of Maynard Ferguson and his orchestra, a blasting big band.

In general, the larger the ensemble, the greater the need for a formal arrangement, although the early Count Basie big band was famous for its head arrangements, so called because they were worked out by the players themselves, memorized immediately and never written down.

Most arrangements for large ensembles, big bands, in the swing era, were written down, however, and credited to a specific arranger, as were later arrangements for the Count Basie big band by Sammy Nestico and Neal Hefti.

He introduced the pattern of arranging melodies in the body of arrangements and arranging section performances of the big band.

Duke Ellington's and Billy Strayhorn's arrangements for the Duke Ellington big band were usually new compositions, and some of Eddie Sauter's arrangements for the Benny Goodman band and Artie Shaw's arrangements for his own band were new compositions as well.

It became more common to arrange sketchy jazz combo compositions for big band after the bop era.

After 1950, the big band trend declined in number.

Monk Montgomery was the first bass player to tour with the Fender bass guitar, with Lionel Hampton's postwar big band.

By then, the Texas Playboys were virtually two bands: one a fiddle-guitar-steel band with rhythm section and the second a first-rate big band able to play the day's swing and pop hits as well as Dixieland.

He commanded enormous fees playing dances there, and began to make more creative use of electric guitars to replace the big horn sections the Tulsa band had boasted.

Beginning in the 1930s, he wrote songs in the big band and swing genres that were popular at the time.

The band, who all wore white shirts with a big, black S painted on the front, pulled black ties from around the backs of their necks to form a dollar sign, then started playing a new song titled " Pull My Strings ", a barbed, satirical attack on the ethics of the mainstream music industry, which contained the lyrics, " Is my cock big enough, is my brain small enough, for you to make me a star ?".

In earlier years the band had criticized neo-Nazi skinheads for trying to ruin the punk scene, but just as big a problem was the increasing popularity of thrash metal and stereotypical macho " post-1982 hardcore " which brought the group ( and their genre ) an audience that had little to do with the ideas / ideals they stood for.

There were also underground discotheques in Nazi Germany patronized by anti-Nazi youth called the swing kids .. Jimmy Saville played records of big band music in dance halls in Leeds, England, during World War Two.

The rich orchestral accompaniment that became identified with the disco era conjured up the memories of the big band era — which brought out several artists that recorded and disco-ized some big band arrangements including Perry Como, who re-recorded his 1929 and 1939 hit, " Temptation ", in 1975, as well as Ethel Merman, who released an album of disco songs entitled The Ethel Merman Disco Album in 1979.

Performance jobs include playing as a freelancer in small groups, large ensembles, or performing solo music, either live onstage or as a session player for radio or TV broadcasts or for recordings ; and working as the employee of an orchestra, big band, or recording studio ( as the studio's house bassist ).

By this time the big band was such a dominant force in jazz that the older generation found they either had to adapt to it or simply retire — with no market for small-group recordings ( made worse by a depression-era industry reluctant to take risks ), some musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines fronted their own bands, while others, like Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, lapsed into obscurity.

The majority of Basie's recordings were made with his big band, see Count Basie Orchestra Discography.

He was also involved in two other recordings in the late 1980s, the first in 1987 with jazz arranger Gil Evans, who placed Sting in a big band setting for a live album of Sting's songs ( the CD was not released in the U. S .), and the second on Frank Zappa's 1988 Broadway the Hard Way album, where Sting performs an unusual arrangement of " Murder By Numbers ", set to the tune " Stolen Moments " by jazz composer Oliver Nelson, and " dedicated " to fundamentalist evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

Some young TV stars were being hustled into studios to make recordings ; for example, ex-Mousketeer Annette Funicello became one of the first big female idols as well as The Lennon Sisters whom had cut out dolls and were always on the covers of the gossip magazines ; another, Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman, had five Top-40 hits.

Some stations would also occasionally play earlier big band-era recordings from the 1940s and early 1950s.

Her recordings of several Serge Gainsbourg songs also were big sellers.

In 2004, Reeves released her first album in 24 years, Home to You, with recordings she had written and produced herself except for a Billie Holiday cover and an updated version of her big hit, " Jimmy Mack ".

Because the room was imbalanced, it created an acoustic anomaly that translated into the recordings, often giving them a big, deep yet raw sound.

In the 1970s, Abrams has composed for symphony orchestras, string quartets, solo piano, voice, and big bands in addition to making a series of larger ensemble recordings that include harp and accordion.

After leaving Philips, Brewer made a few recordings for other companies, but with no more big chart hits.

Due to what Caldwell has cited in interviews a lower cost of use than the original recordings, his versions of big band standards have appeared in several films.

BMG continued to release her big band's recordings in Japan, but remained skeptical about releasing the music in the United States — since the 1950s, big band music has rarely achieved commercial success in the US.

All of her big band recordings and nearly all of her other early works have been re-issued on CDs over the years.

Its Decca recordings were not big sellers and a stint as Bob Hope's backup radio band was an unhappy experience ; Les Brown permanently took Kenton's place.

Baden Powell first appeared as accompanist on a handful of big band and Samba recordings from the 1950s.

The film omitted " The Touch of Your Hand " ( sung by a minor character ), " Something Had To Happen ", and " You're Devastating " ( originally Middleton's big song in the show ), but added the Kern songs " I Won't Dance " and " Lovely to Look At ", which became so popular that they are now always included in revivals and recordings of Roberta.

Although hard-working and popular live ( playing to crowds of 800-1000 ), the band's recordings were never up to suitable quality and they failed to make it big.

In the pre-cast album era, musicals generally were popularized by recordings of its songs by vocalists or big bands and / or sales of its sheet music.

The label had the aim of generating sufficient revenue from recordings of ' big name ' artists to allow the release of recordings by lesser-known artists.

This was followed by numerous other solo recordings: Mosquitos ( 1989 ), Partyball ( 1991 ), Black Diamond ( 1995 ), and Anatomy ( 1999 ), The Way I Feel Today ( 1998 ), a collection of big band standards, and Holiday in Dirt ( 2001 ), a compilation of outtakes and previously unreleased songs.

Figger we got to be plumb careful with any of you Highlands big shots ''.

The water in Thor's big swimming pool had been covered with a blanket of thick, foamy soapsuds -- fashioned, of course, from zing -- Joyce had dived from the board into the pool, then swirled and cavorted in her luxurious `` bath '' while cameras rolled.

The big man with the whitened hair murmured something: his words sounded as if they were in the Manu tongue, which I recognized, having studied the dialect in my Anthropology 6, class at the University of Chicago.

I clapped the big man with the bleached hair on his shoulder and said heartily, hoping it would make an impression on the women: `` This one is the maku Frayne.

All the drivers knew about the plates and they also knew about the big floppy straw hat with shredded edges, the kind natives in travel ads wear when they are out joyfully chopping cane.

He was on the thin side, with big hands, and the kind of wrists that give away the power in forearm and bicep.

Within seconds the big barn was blasted into smoking splinters, with every outlaw either dead or injured inside.

For several months now, Jack Carter, a big overgrown boy of fifteen with a fuzzy, pimpled face and greenish catlike eyes with a lot of red in them, had been haunted by a dream, a vision, of a Woman.

At noontime, remembering what the teacher had said about maybe playing with the kids, Jack stayed close to the schoolhouse while all the other big boys, except Charles, went off out the road to play ball.

This was the big man with the proprietory air and the beetling, shaggy eyebrows.

Real big, with shoulders out to here, and hair all over him like a grizzly.

Then they were tumbling again, and the big man reached into the same pocket he had gone for earlier, and came up with a vicious switchblade.

The novel, which is not merely dystopian but also brilliantly satiric, describes a future America where one-sixteenth of the population, the men who run advertising agencies and big corporations, control the rest of the people, the submerged fifteen-sixteenths who are the workers and consumers, with the government being no more than `` a clearing house for pressures ''.

If only this could be done more often -- with such heartening results -- many of the earth's `` big problems '' would shrink to the insignificances they really are.

Gloria ( surname: Ziraldo ), circa 30, who was born in Italy and once did `` chorus work '' in Toronto, has been around longer than most of the others, wistfully remembers the old days when `` we used to get the seamen from the ships, you know, with big turtleneck sweaters and handkerchiefs and all.

One cannot but wonder whether these doubts about the success of Khrushchev's agricultural policy have not at least something to do with one of the big surprises provided by this Congress -- the obsessive harping on the crimes and misdeeds of the `` anti-party group '' -- Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and others -- including the eighty-year-old Marshal Voroshilov.

`` P. J. '' -- as Ludie called the town -- was crowded with summer people who came to the mountains to escape the heat in the big cities.

For it is such a distinguished place, with such fine works of art and such a big library, that there can be little doubt but that the owner has become depraved by all this culture.

A rowdy with a big blob of a nose roared.

Her quarters were on the right as you walked into the building, and her small front room was clogged with heavy furniture -- a big, round, oak dining table and chairs, a buffet, with a row of unclaimed letters inserted between the mirror and its frame.

`` There's a big boat anchored near the Place De La Concorde, with a swimming pool in it -- didn't you notice it??

It had gone big with the Hollywood girls when he told them his sister was an editor of Art And Apparel.

A scant half mile away Shelley and Mary were doubtless sitting on their diminutive terrace, the air about them scented with stock, and listening to the nightingale who had nested in the big lime tree at the foot of the garden.