The Big Bands by George T. Simon is a 537-page cloth-bound hardcover published by The Macmillan Company. This copy is the seventh printing of 1969. The dust jacket has numerous chips, closed tears and surface wear but is fully intact. Inside, the pages are clean and unmarked and the binding is sound.
The Big Bands come swinging back to glory in this big, definitive, all-inclusive chronicle of the men and women and the music that made America forget its troubles and just get happy. This is it. The whole scene. The way it was when you could catch Benny Goodman with his great band, complete with Gene Krupa, tearing it up in the Manhattan Room of the Hotel Pennsylvania. Or fight it out for a front-row balcony seat at the Paramount for the fabulous Tommy Dorsey stage show with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers. Or roll up the rugs and dance to Jimmy Dorsey's big broadcast, featuring Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell, from the Steel Pier at Atlantic City.
All across America from the mid-thirties to the mid-forties the big bands were king. And the kings held forth wherever there was room enough to hold their throngs of fans--in the big hotels like the Sherman in Chicago, in the great ballrooms like the Palladium in Los Angeles, in the posh niteries like the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Radios and record players brought the big hits of the big bands closer to home--Artie Shaw's "Begin the Beguine," Glenn Miller's "In the Mood," Harry James's "You Make Me Love You" and hundreds more.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-26643
