Introduction
Introduction
This introductory chapter digs up the forgotten legacies of arrangers in jazz music and emphasizes their importance in the cultural history of music. It illustrates how African American arranger Francis “Chappie” Willet's (1907–76) career offers a poignant model for examining some of the controversies surrounding the arranging discipline. Willet was an ambitious entrepreneur—he established a music school, recording studio, talent agency, and publishing venture—and a celebrated “race man” in the black press, enjoying an unusually well-documented career that reflected many social concerns of the period. The chapter also delves into the history of jazz music and the Swing Era as a whole, as well as the place of the arranger in jazz history, and briefly discusses the historical sources from which this volume's research is based on.
Keywords: jazz, Swing Era, jazz history, music history, musical arrangers, Chappie Willet, race, New York, music arranging
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