1940s in music
Encyclopedia
For music from a year in the 1940s, go to 40
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This article includes an overview of the major events and trends in popular music
in the 1940s
.
In the First World
, pop music
, Swing, Big band
, Jazz
, Latin
and Country music
dominated and defined the decade's music.
tradition that swing began. 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
, whom rose to fame as a singer during this time. Sinatra's vast appeal to the "Bobby soxer
s" 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
.
Some of the most notable Swing artists of the 1940s include Benny Goodman
and Glenn Miller
. Some of the most notable crooners of the 1940s include Bing Crosby
, Frank Sinatra
and Nat King Cole
.
In the 1940s, pure jazz began to become more popular, along with the blues, with artists like Ella Fitzgerald
("A-Tisket, A-Tasket") and Billie Holiday
("Strange Fruit
") becoming nationally successful.
By the 1940s, Dixieland jazz
revival musicians like Jimmy McPartland
, Eddie Condon
and Bud Freeman
had become well-known and established their own unique style. Most characteristically, players entered solos against riffing by other horns, and were followed by a closing with the drummer playing a four-bar tag that was then answered by the rest of the band.
Some of the most notable Jazz
artists of the 1940s include Ella Fitzgerald
, Billie Holiday
, Louis Armstrong
and Nat King Cole
.
style of jazz was developed, led by such distinctive stylists as the saxophonist Charlie Parker
and Dizzy Gillespie
. This marked a major shift of jazz as pop music
for dancing to a high-art, less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music." Bebop valued complex improvisations based on chord progression
s rather than melody
.
and idealized depictions of the west in Hollywood films. Singing cowboy
s, 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 motion pictures.
In the post-war period, country music was called "folk" in the trades, and "hillbilly" within the industry. In 1944, The Billboard
replaced the term "hillbilly" with "folk songs and blues," and switched to "country" or "country and Western" in 1949.
1940 in music
-Events:*July 20 - Billboard magazine publishes its first "Music Popularity Chart".*May 27 - Quartetto Egie make their debut performance.*August - Edmundo Ros forms his own rumba band.*November 23 - Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Quintet is premièred....
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1941 in music
-Events:*January 5 – Ernesto Bonino makes his début on Italian radio.*January 15 – Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps is premiered in Stalag VIIIA in Silesia.*January 20 – Béla Bartók's String Quartet No...
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1942 in music
- Events :*July 21 - In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the Goldman Band performs a unique concert, playing all original works. This was the first time a concert of music originally composed for the wind ensemble had been performed....
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1943 in music
-Events:*January 1 - Frank Sinatra appears at The Paramount causing a mob of hysterical bobby-soxers to flood Times Square and blocking midtown New York City traffic for hours...
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1944 in music
-Events:*January 18 - The Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for the first time hosts a jazz concert; the performers are Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge and Jack Teagarden....
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1945 in music
-Events:*The Motion Picture Daily Fame Poll designates Bing Crosby "Top Male Vocalist" for the ninth straight year.*July 26 - Composer Ernest John Moeran marries cellist Peers Coetmore.*August 19 - Dick Powell marries June Allyson....
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1946 in music
- Events :*January 6 – A somewhat revised and streamlined revival of Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat opens on Broadway at the Ziegfeld Theatre, the same theatre at which the original production played back in 1927. This production features newly designed sets and costumes, new, more extended...
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1947 in music
-Events:*August 7 – Carlo Bergonzi makes his professional debut as Schaunard in La Bohème at the Arena Argentina in Catania.*October – Enrico De Angelis leaves Quartetto Cetra to join the army...
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1948 in music
-Events:*May 20 - The Second International Congress of Composers and Music Critics 1948 opens in Prague.*June 5 - Opening of the first Aldeburgh Festival, founded by Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier and Peter Pears....
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1949 in music
-Events:*February 4 – Ljuba Welitsch makes her Metropolitan Opera début in Salome.*September 5 - Wagnerian tenor Walter Widdop appears at The Proms, singing "Lohengrin's Farewell", the day before his sudden death at the age of 51....
This article includes an overview of the major events and trends in popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
in the 1940s
1940s
File:1940s decade montage.png|Above title bar: events which happened during World War II : From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching "Omaha" Beach on "D-Day"; Adolf Hitler visits Paris, soon after the Battle of France; The Holocaust occurred during the war as Nazi Germany...
.
In the First World
First World
The concept of the First World first originated during the Cold War, where it was used to describe countries that were aligned with the United States. These countries were democratic and capitalistic. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term "First World" took on a...
, pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, Swing, Big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
, Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
dominated and defined the decade's music.
Pop
In the US, by the late 1930s and early 1940s, swing had become the most popular musical style and remained so for several years, until it was supplanted in the late 1940s by the pop standards sung by the crooners who grew out of the Big BandBig band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
tradition that swing began. Bandleaders such as the Dorsey Brothers
The Dorsey Brothers
The Dorsey Brothers were a studio group fronted by musicians Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. They started recording under their name in 1928 with a series of studio recordings for the OKeh label...
often helped launch the careers of vocalists who went on to popularity as solo artists, such as Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, whom rose to fame as a singer during this time. Sinatra's vast appeal to the "Bobby soxer
Bobby soxer
Bobby soxer is a 1940s sociologic coinage denoting the over zealous, usually teenage and young adult girls from about 12 to 25, fans of singer Frank Sinatra, the first singing teen idol. Fashionable adolescent girls wore poodle skirts and rolled down their socks to the ankle...
s" 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
Teen idol
A teen idol is a celebrity who is widely idolized by teenagers; he or she is often young but not necessarily teenaged. Often teen idols are actors or pop singers, but some sports figures have an appeal to teenagers. Some teen idols began their careers as child actors...
.
Some of the most notable Swing artists of the 1940s include Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...
and Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...
. Some of the most notable crooners of the 1940s include Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
, Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
and Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
.
Jazz
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
("A-Tisket, A-Tasket") and Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
("Strange Fruit
Strange Fruit
"Strange Fruit" is a song performed most famously by Billie Holiday, who released her first recording of it in 1939, the year she first sang it. Written by the teacher Abel Meeropol as a poem, it exposed American racism, particularly the lynching of African Americans. Such lynchings had occurred...
") becoming nationally successful.
By the 1940s, Dixieland jazz
Dixieland Jazz
Dixieland Jazz was a Canadian music television series which aired on CBC Television in 1954.-Premise:The series host was Trump Davidson, a cornet player. He also hosted a radio music series on CBC's Trans-Canada Network.-Scheduling:...
revival musicians like Jimmy McPartland
Jimmy McPartland
James Dugald McPartland , better known as Jimmy McPartland, was an American cornetist and one of the originators of Chicago Jazz...
, Eddie Condon
Eddie Condon
Albert Edwin Condon , better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion....
and Bud Freeman
Bud Freeman
Lawrence "Bud" Freeman was a U.S. jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing the tenor saxophone, but also able at the clarinet. He had a smooth and full tenor sax style with a heavy robust swing. He was one of the most influential and important jazz tenor saxophonists of...
had become well-known and established their own unique style. Most characteristically, players entered solos against riffing by other horns, and were followed by a closing with the drummer playing a four-bar tag that was then answered by the rest of the band.
Some of the most notable Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
artists of the 1940s include Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
and Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles , known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American musician who first came to prominence as a leading jazz pianist. Although an accomplished pianist, he owes most of his popular musical fame to his soft baritone voice, which he used to perform in big band and jazz genres...
.
Bebop
In the early and mid-1940s the bebopBebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
style of jazz was developed, led by such distinctive stylists as the saxophonist Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
and Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz...
. This marked a major shift of jazz as pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
for dancing to a high-art, less-accessible, cerebral "musician's music." Bebop valued complex improvisations based on chord progression
Chord progression
A chord progression is a series of musical chords, or chord changes that "aims for a definite goal" of establishing a tonality founded on a key, root or tonic chord. In other words, the succession of root relationships...
s rather than melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
.
Country music
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, cowboy songs, or Western music, became widely popular through the romanticization of the cowboyCowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
and idealized depictions of the west in Hollywood films. Singing cowboy
Singing cowboy
A singing cowboy was a subtype of the archetypal cowboy hero of early Western films, popularized by many of the B-movies of the 1930s and 1940s...
s, such as Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
and Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
, sang cowboy songs in their films and became popular throughout the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Film producers began incorporating fully orchestrated four-part harmonies and sophisticated musical arrangements into their motion pictures.
In the post-war period, country music was called "folk" in the trades, and "hillbilly" within the industry. In 1944, The Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
replaced the term "hillbilly" with "folk songs and blues," and switched to "country" or "country and Western" in 1949.
Other Trends
- In 1941 Les PaulLes PaulLester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
designs and builds the first solid-body electric guitar. - In 1942 Bing CrosbyBing CrosbyHarry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
recorded and released the single White ChristmasWhite Christmas (song)"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.Accounts vary as...
which became the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide. - In 1948 Columbia RecordsColumbia RecordsColumbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
introduces the 33⅓ rpm LP (“long playing”) record at New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's Waldorf-Astoria HotelWaldorf-Astoria HotelThe Waldorf-Astoria is a luxury hotel in New York. It has been housed in two historic landmark buildings in New York City. The first, designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, was on the Fifth Avenue site of the Empire State Building. The present building at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan is a...
, featuring 25 minutes of music per side - In 1949 RCA Victor introduces the 45 rpm record, featuring 8 minutes of music.
Latin America
- In 1948 Perez PradoPerez PradoDámaso Pérez Prado was a Cuban bandleader, musician , and composer. He is often referred to as the 'King of the Mambo'.His orchestra was the most popular in mambo...
recorded the first Mambo in Mexico for RCA Victor