Why did big bands of the 1940's die out?

Answer 1

There were a number of factors.

As with any musical style, peoples' tastes changed over time. However, there were a number of factors specific to the big bands that caused their demise as the most popular form of music:

First, the price of attendance at dances and concerts in the 1930s/40s was artificially low. Theaters would feature both a band and a film, with the film in effect subsidizing the band's appearance. Also the recording companies had a lot of power and held down salaries - many musicians were paid straight wages rather than a percentage of a recording's gross or net profit, no matter how many copies were sold. By keeping costs low, it was possible for most venues to feature as many as 15 or 20 musicians at a time. But as the bands gained popularity, many of the musicians started to demand a piece of that success. This resulted in two strikes.

The first strike was in 1941 against ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers. Orchestras were allowed to keep performing and recording but only if they didn't feature ASCAP songs. To compensate, arrangers looked for any and every tune they could find that was in the public domain. There were swing versions of melodies by Ravel and Tchaikovskii, even kids' songs such as "Where O Where Has My Little Dog Gone?". Solos had to be written out instead of improvised, just to ensure that a musician didn't accidentally slip in a bar or two from an ASCAP song. While there was still a lot of good music performed, overall quality fell because of those restrictions.

The second strike was much more serious in its length and damage. Despite the first strike musicians were still pretty much under the thumb of the recording companies so in July 1942 the musician's union imposed a ban on all recording. Live performances were still allowed but no records could be made. This couldn't have come at a worse time because most bands were facing wartime travel restrictions and couldn't perform new songs in person in nearly as many places. Recordings would have been an important way of keeping their music before the general public.

The recording companies exploited a loophole in the ban that allowed singers to continue to make records. They put together vocal groups who sang what would have been the instrumental parts of a song a capella, and fronted them with some of the popular singers of the time such as Dick Haymes and Frank Sinatra. It was contrived and not very good, but it had the effect of keeping the singers in the public eye while instrumental musicians were limited to whatever public performances they were able to make. When musicians' union finally negotiated settlements with each record company, they found that their popularity had been eclipsed by the singers.

The strike settlement also brought with it much higher salaries, but doing so priced them out of the market for ballrooms and theaters. Fans weren't willing or able to spend several times what they had before the war to see the same performances.

The war itself also affected the bands in several ways.

A number of the most popular leaders such as Artie Shaw, Larry Clinton, Claude Thornhill, and Glenn Miller had gone into the armed forces so they were no longer leading their bands in public. Among the bands that continued, so many musicians were drafted that some sections would go through a complete rotation of personnel in less than a month. Retirees and high-school band members were being recruited, resulting in lower performance quality in many cases.

Then there was the sheer fact that a huge number of potential fans were "working" for Uncle Sam. While they listened to a lot of recorded music, they were in no position to go to a Saturday dance. After the war ended these potential fans were occupied with recovering as much as four years of their lives that had been put on hold. They had to concentrate more on returning to school, starting a family, and finding a job as opposed to going to dances.

Finally, a number of music critics have contended that had Glenn Miller lived, just the force of his creativity and musical sense might have slowed the bands' decline. It's difficult for us to realize just how large a part of the music scene he was - his popularity by several measures exceeded that of both Elvis Presley and The Beatles, so his loss was not just that of one among many musicians but went to the core of popular jazz. About the only possible analogy would be to imagine the state of rock music had the Beatles been killed in a plane crash in 1966, or had Elvis died in 1954.

AnswerBig bands died out in the 1940s for many reasons. First, band members started to enter into the military services.

Answer 2

The recording strike of 1942 dealt a blow to the big bands, from which they never recovered. In the late 1940s, bebop replaced big band as the most popular form of music among American youth.