Claude Thornhill was a pianist, composer, and arranger whose 1940s big band helped shape the sound of modern jazz, with orchestral bop and ethereal ballads tinged with classical influences that set ...

What brings a bounce to your step like the big sound of a swing band? That’s exactly what the big bands of the 1930s and ’40s did for America. As the country was slowly recovering from the Great ...

It was first recorded by Claude Thornhill and his orchestra in spring of 1941, the swing era, and “Snowfall” has endured with its lush brass sounds and Thornhill’s exquisite piano playing. That music, ...

Betty Bennett, who in the 1940s sang with bands led by Alvino Rey, Claude Thornhill and Charlie Ventura before moving to Los Angeles and recording vocal albums for Trend, Atlantic, United Artists and ...

Joan Fry Flory, 71, who worked in the 1950s as a big band singer under the name Joan Durell. Born in Toronto, Flory was a runner-up Miss Canada in 1949. She sang with the orchestras of Art Mooney, ...