Dancing With Duchin

One of Acrobat’s most popular and successful series are the America’s Greatest Hits collections – 4-CD sets featuring the biggest hits from the Billboard charts from 1940, when the Billboard record sales chart was launched, through to 1962. However, before the Billboard chart was first published, the popular US weekly radio show Your Hit Parade, sponsored by Lucky Strike, began producing a chart in 1935, which was sometimes a Top 10, sometimes a Top 15, so we decided to take the America’s Greatest Hits format back into the Your Hit Parade era of the 1930s.

The so-called Great Swing Band Era is generally considered to have started in 1935 when Benny Goodman, playing at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21 and tiring of what he described as 'mundane' dance music, moved his band into high gear and gave out with some Fletcher Henderson arrangements. Quoting saxophonist Hymie Schertzer, "The place exploded." and Goodman was proclaimed 'King of Swing'. But back in the Twenties there were great bands that played good swingy numbers, bands like those of Whiteman, Goldkette, Waring, Weems, Olsen and Lopez (to name but a few), although the 'swing' wasn't quite the same. The rhythm could often seem a little jerky and sometimes rather on the frantic side. Repertoires were laced with novelty tunes which were much in demand. But who cared? It was the 'Jazz Age', the 'Flapper Era' (take your pick) and everyone was hell-bent on having a good time, making whoopee.