Episode Six: Swing, The Velocity of Celebration

As the 1930s come to a close, Swing-mania is still going strong, but some fans are saying success has made the music too predictable. Their ears are tuned to a new sound--pulsing, stomping, suffused with the blues. It's the Kansas City sound of Count Basie's band, and it quickly reignites the spirit of Swing. By 1938, Basie and his men are helping Benny Goodman bring jazz to Carnegie Hall. After the show, they travel uptown to battle Chick Webb to a draw at the Savoy Ballroom. And that summer, they turn 52nd Street into "Swing Street," performing nightly at the Famous Door. Soon Basie's lead saxophonist, Lester Young, is challenging Coleman Hawkins for supremacy, matching the old sax master's muscular sound with a laid-back style of his own. Young teams with Billie Holiday for a series of recordings that reveals them as musical soulmates, and tours with her in Basie's band until she leaves to join Artie Shaw. But America isn't ready for a black woman who swings with white musicians, and Holiday is soon back in New York, pouring her outrage into the anti-lynching ballad "Strange Fruit." By the decade's end, Chick Webb has taken a chance on a teenage singer named Ella Fitzgerald and achieved the fame he dreamed of. Duke Ellington has been hailed as a hero in Europe, amid anxious preparations for war. And weeks after that war begins, Coleman Hawkins startles the world with a glimpse of what jazz will become, improvising a new music on the old standard "Body and Soul." ©2001 Amazon.com