Economics....Rock and Roll came along, and it only took 2 or 3 musicians......and then rap came along, and you didn’t even need musicians anymore.
I had no idea but always wondered what really killed the Big Bands so quickly after the war. Leave it to the FEDS to screw up a good, no GREAT thing.
Interesting read. I’ve generally always bought into the notion that after the war ended, the public actually wanted a little less rambunciousness in their lives, and tastes veered from loud bands to calming vocalists. It does make a fair bit of sense.
The draft really killed off a lot of bands well before 1946, though. They were struggling, with sidemen being taken away left and right, needing constant replacements, etc.
Interesting article, something I’ve wondered about but never gave much thought to.
I’m not subscribing to the WSJ to read the story, but it’s a specious conclusion that some sort of tax caused the decline of BB music. Evolving tastes and teens with money who liked RnR a lot more than BBm probably caused it’s decline. There were still plenty of big bands around when I was a kid, but my parents never bought one stinking music album. In fact, they used to listen my Tijuana Brass albums. But few teens wanted to hear brassy music. They wanted to hear that rock and roll guitar a lot more.
That and ASCAP’s royalty collection caused the demise of small groups peforming at your local watering hole. That feud also brought on Rock and Roll to radio with rival groups representing “recording” artists which broke ASCAPS stranglehold .
It had nothing to do with music moving on to a new genre, like 1950s Rock -n- Roll?
Interesting article.
All of it occured before I was born, but my Grandfather and his brothers were all in bands prior to the war. Aftewards, from what I recall, he said the bands just weren’t around anymore for whatever reason.
Seems Rock and Roll didn’t really pick up popular steam until around ‘54/’55 - that’s almost 10 years after the article cites the big band death.
Curious what was happening in the interim. Sinatra was definitely around, but IIRC, that between period coincides with a lull in his career as well.
Better sound systems and more affordable records and the prevalence of radio may have been a factor. Eventually TV too - Lawrence Welk started in ‘55 so there must have been some demand for big band music still around.
Federal taxes caused bebop? Baloney.
The whole big band thing had gone stale once into the 40s, cabaret tax or not. Creative musicians were stifled in big bands, and they moved on to something new.
WSJ attribute the decline of Big Band music to a tax.
Wikipedia attributes it to:
a loss of quality (due to WWII deaths of key members) and
a 1942 musician’s strike (causing vocalists to break away from the bands, leading to an emphasis on the vocalists) and
changing tastes to non-danceable music (bebop, cuban, modern jazz)
I especially like this point: "When Rep. Thomas Pelly (R., Wash.) in 1957 argued that musicians and entertainers were "under the lash" of the tax, other lawmakers suggested the solution wasn't to repeal the tax, but to provide musicians with federal grants." So the cure for federal meddling in the free market is even more meddling.
I actually knew about this tax. My father had been in a swing band to earn extra money while in college, then he went off to war. When he returned he rejoined the band briefly until the band dis-banded because of Truman’s tax on music. Most of the bands barely broke even and the tax made is a guaranteed loss.
bkmk
What happened between the end of big bands in the late 40s and RR in the mid-50s?
TV.
The new craze of which many big bands found their way onto.