Category:Big Band

thumb|300px|right|The Duke Ellington Orchestra performs "Take the A Train" 1943The Big Band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz, a style of music which evolved in the Southern United States in the mid 1800s as a primarily African-American art form.

The sound then migrated with Southern musicians to the Northern industrial cities, where big talents met the big money of wealthy young industrialists and a growing middle class that craved entertainment.

Big Band jazz came into full blossom during the "Swing Era" from the early 1930s until the late 1940s when young white America adopted the sound and paid the kind of money to hear it that made it feasible for band leaders to "super-size" their bands to create a bigger, brassier sound.

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