finetune artist: Paul Whiteman

b. 28 March 1890, Denver, Colorado, USA, d. 29 December 1967, Doylestown, Pennsylvania, USA. Whiteman's father was a distinguished music teacher and a career in music seemed the most natural thing for the youngster to follow. A tall, heavily-built individual, Whiteman first learned classical violin, and in his teens was a member of the local symphony orchestra. During World War I he organized bands in the US Navy and thereafter led his own bands in Los Angeles, Atlantic City and eventually New York City. By 1920, he already had a recording contract with RCA-Victor Records; in 1923 he took a band to London, and in the following year presented a spectacular concert at New York's Aeolian Hall. Billed as an "Experiment In Modern Music", the occasion was later hailed, inaccurately, as the first jazz concert. It was typical of what was to become the Whiteman trademark: lavish presentation, many musicians, and music of all kinds mixed together, whether compatible or not. The concert also saw the premiere of a work specially commissioned for the occasion, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody In Blue", with the composer at the piano. Whiteman's star rose and he performed concerts at Carnegie Hall and in capital cities across Europe. He always took a highly commercial view of the music business, and when he saw the growing popularity of jazz (allied to the fact that he loved this kind of music), he decided to hire the best white jazz musicians money could buy.

Listen to Paul Whiteman at Finetune.

Limehouse Blues

dmoser