Music in the 40s

 

The 40s established a new era in which music started to be a way of ask for the human basic rights and fighting for the injustices. In the First World, pop music, Swing, Big band, Jazz, Latin and Country music dominated and defined the decade's music.

Pop

Bing Crosby was the leading figure of the crooner sound as well as its most iconic, defining artist. By the 1940s, he was an entertainment superstar who mastered all of the major media formats of the day, movies, radio, and recorded music.
Bandleaders such as the Dorsey Brothers often helped launch the careers of vocalists who went on to popularity as solo artists, such as Frank Sinatra, who rose to fame as a singer during this time. Sinatra's vast appeal to the "Bobby soxers" revealed a whole new audience for popular music, which had generally appealed mainly to adults up to that time, making Sinatra the first teen idol.
The entry of the US into World War II brought about a rapid end to big band swing as many musicians were conscripted into the armed forces and travel restrictions made it hard for bands to tour.
After the war, a combination of factors such as changing demographics and rapid inflation made large bands unprofitable so that popular music in the US came to be dominated instead by traditional pop and crooners, as well as bebop and jump blues.
Some of the most notable Swing artists of the 1940s include Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. 

Swing and Jazz

Some of the most notable Jazz artists of the 1940s include Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole.

Jazz reached the height of its popularity with the American public during the Swing era, beginning in the dark days of the Depression and continuing through the victorious end of World War II. Also known as the Big Band sound, Swing jazz was characterised by its strong rhythmic drive and by an orchestral ‘call and response’ between different sections of the ensemble. The rhythm section – piano, bass, drums and guitar – maintained the swinging dance beat, while trumpets, trombones and woodwinds, and later, vocals, were often scored to play together and provide the emotional focus of the piece.
The first great artists of Swing were African American.
At its height in the years before World War II, Swing jazz was America’s most pervasive and popular musical genre. Then the history of Swing must also be seen as preparing the way for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s. Knowing that a wider and increasingly diverse population of Americans was taking African American musicians seriously fuelled a growing conviction that equality was a real possibility.
Swing was also a good opportunity for American women. As Americans danced to Swing bands during the 1940s, a new space for female musicians also opened up. Some women like Sherrie Tucker, author of Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s, and Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss, directors of The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, demonstrate how the outbreak of World War II gave women the unprecedented opportunity to perform music publicly for large audiences. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm was one of many “all-girl” bands that toured the country when most of their male peers were in the military. For the first time, female musicians in America consistently proved that they could play trumpets, saxophones, and drums with as much expertise as men.
                                          

Not all Americans were enchanted by the widespread success and influence of Swing jazz and the challenges to social norms it represented. For example, although the races were generally kept separate at Swing performances, there were consistent expressions of outrage at the energetic dancing that accompanied concerts and persistent criticism of the influence of Swing music on young people. Young white women were especially targeted by those who considered Swing a “mulatto” music and wanted to preserve a fantasy of white purity on the dance floor and the bandstand.

Jazz historians today consistently celebrate Ellington, Henderson, and other African American musicians as the most sophisticated and compelling musicians of the Swing Era. But white Swing musicians like Goodman also contributed to the evolution of the genre. While many jazz musicians broke away from Swing to develop Bebop jazz, the young white denizens of the Swing dance halls in the 1940s married, raised children, and moved to the suburbs. They would soon prefer a night in front of the black-and-white television set to a night dancing to black or white Swing bands. And just as Swing dancers had scandalised their parents with their commitment to ‘mulatto music’.
Furthermore of these aspects, Jazz established an important humanity conscience in the American society.
Jazz and Equality. Since its earliest days on the streets of New Orleans, jazz has bridged communities with diverse ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds, speaking a common musical language that anyone can understand. Jazz has crossed national borders and challenged the status quo and it is an example of how an art form contributes to changing social, economic and class relationships.
The History of Women Musicians. Swing during the World War II era offered female jazz musicians (and vocalists) unprecedented opportunities as part of a time period when women also had unprecedented opportunities in other jobs and professions because of the shortage of labor on the home front from men serving in the war effort.
Jazz as an Art Form. Jazz has been considered as “art music” and as a part of popular music, especially in the era of Swing jazz. Can jazz be understood as an art as strong as European classical music? Can classical genres of music have an influence on popular music and vice-versa.
Jazz as it Intersects with Other Art Forms. The importance of Swing dancing to the World War II era generation – particularly dancing by women with a new sense of freedom– is a key element in the history of popular music in the 20th century. How did jazz music influence other forms of art in the 20th Century.

Bebop

In the 40s it created a new style of jazz named ‘bebop’ characterised by improvisation.
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz characterised by a fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation

based on the combination of harmonic structure and sometimes references to the melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. This style of jazz ultimately became synonymous with modern jazz, as either category reached a certain final maturity in the 1960s.
It developed as the younger generation of jazz musicians aimed to counter the popular swing style with a new, non-danceable music that demanded listening. With bebop no longer being a dance music, it enabled the musicians to play at faster tempos. Bebop musicians explored advanced harmonies, complex syncopation, altered chords, chord substitutions, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and using rhythm sections in a way that expanded on their role. The classic bebop combo consisted of saxophone, trumpet, piano, double bass, and drums.

Country music

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, became widely popular through the romantization of the cowboy and idealised depictions of the west in Hollywood films. 
Singing cowboys, such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, sang cowboy songs in their films and became popular throughout the United States. Film producers began incorporating fully orchestrated four-part harmonies and sophisticated musical arrangements into their promotion pictures.
But while cowboy and Western music were the most popular styles, a new style -honky tonk- would take root and define the genre of country music for decades to come. The style meshed Western swing and blues music; featured rough, nasal vocals backed by instruments such as the guitar, fiddle, string bass and steel guitar; and had lyrics that focused on tragic themes of lost love, adultery, loneliness, alcoholism and self-pity.


         


Here I give you a top 10 song of the 1940s, I hope you have enjoy this post and these songs!

Top 10 song of the 1940s

10 Blue Moon of Kentucky'
Bill Monroe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeOXgh4lTjY

9 'Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)
Tex Williams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJcKxlKsAy4

8 Slippin’ Around'

Margaret Whiting and Jimmy Wakely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyJGfwm9GIQ

7 'Pistol Packin’ Mama'
Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYUCFZ5NGsU

6 'New San Antonio Rose'
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C08jmN1sM8

5 'Smoke on the Water'
Red Foley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQ2NGWRbvU

6 'Candy Kisses'
George Morgan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpINxGE7A7Q

3 'Walking the Floor Over You'
Ernest Tubb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWmbFXJDHrM

2 'Lovesick Blues'
Hank Williams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMb_7HDWjZo

1 'Bouquet of Roses'
Eddy Arnold
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qECR90Qpa8

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.musicopolis.es/los-anos-40-y-50-la-revolucion-del-jazz-y-los-efectos-de-la-ii-guerra-mundial/258482011/

http://americasmusic.tribecafilminstitute.org/session/view/swing-jazz 

http://www.jazzstandards.com/history/history-4.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940s_in_jazz

http://tasteofcountry.com/top-1940s-songs/