Originally posted September 2011
Robert Baird writes .....
Big bands died out back in the 1950s, right? They went away when the jitterbug faded and folks began dancing to music other than swing? And then real jazz fans departed when the bebop soloists came along and made big-band players look clumsy and quaint?Despite that widely accepted tale, the big band never quite went away. Since the war years, the big bands' indisputably wide palette of instrumental colors and voicings has become an irresistible lure to composers, players, and arrangers as varied as Sun Ra, Gil Evans, and Fela Kuti. One constant voice in the world of big bands is that of Gerald Wilson, a writer, arranger, and bandleader who's been .....
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