Paul Whiteman

Paul Whiteman says sometimes Pops is a American Leader , born the March 28th 1880 with Denver and dead the December 29th 1967 with Doylestown (Pennsylvania).

Biography

Born in 1880, wire of a professor of music, Paul Whiteman begins his career like Altiste in the symphony orchestra of Denver then in that of San Francisco. It also takes part as instrumentalist (Violon or viola) in many dance bands. In 1919, it founds its own orchestra. In 1920 it records its first faces for the label Victor. The orchestra of Whiteman plays, inter alia, for reviews of which those of Florenz Ziegfield. Notoriety arriving, Whiteman widens the personnel of its orchestra and proclaims it symphonic orchestra of Jazz . In the facts, the repertory is composed of music of dance and varieties, of “rearranged” resumptions of traditional parts, edulcorated jazz and attempts at fusion between “traditional” and jazz.

Whiteman is very popular in the the Twenties. This enables him to place from the orders to recognized type-setters (Gershwin, Stravinski and with maintaining passably forgotten Ferde Grofé and Bill Challis. It orders from George Gershwin the Rhapsody in blues which it gives in public to the Aeolian Hall of New York, on February 24th, 1924, with the type-setter with the piano and that he records on June 10th. It is also the first to record the Concerto in F same Gershwin and the Scherzo with Russian of Igor Stravinski.

However, these incursions into the universe of the “erudite” music remain marginal, the orchestra of Whiteman is before a whole orchestra of varieties (it is there that the singer Bing Crosby will make known himself) and especially a jazz band, atypical certainly (arrangements are not always better taste), but introducing excellent soloists. There with the passing of years, one could hear the cornet player Bix Beiderbecke, the trumpet players Harry Busse, Red Nichols, Andy Secrest, Bunny Berigan, the trombonists Bill Rank, Jack Teagarden, and Tommy Dorsey, the saxophonists Frankie Trumbauer, Jimmy Dorsey, the violonist Joe Venuti, the guitarist Eddie Lang and the singer Mildred Bailey.

At the end of the Twenties, Whiteman is crowned besides “King of the jazz”. In 1930, it is even the high-speed motorboat of a musical film which to him is dedicated “King off jazz”. The arrival of the era of the swing will put an end to its “reign”, Whiteman will continue to direct its orchestra until the medium of the the Forties. Starting from this date, it directs nothing any more but occasional orchestras.

It deals on the other hand with the direction of the American Broascasting Corporation . He dies in 1967. Its work is recognized in freemasonry.

Its work

Adulated in the Twenties, unduly crowned “King of the jazz”, Paul Whiteman was scorned a long time by the critics of jazz. Admittedly the bombastic style and fireman of some of arrangements of the orchestra often very badly aged, but it is necessary to recognize in Whiteman its real will to give a “respectability” to the jazz (even if its “concept” were naive and unsuited), its large open-minded and especially its capacity with knowing to recruit excellent soloists. The listening of beaches of Whiteman, in addition to the fact that it us replonge in an environment “mad years” - very “Francis Scott Fitzgerald” - with a little obsolete charm, offers excellent surprises sometimes musicalement.

Random links: