In the 1920s and 1930s, boiling hot American jazz didn’t really suit the British reserve. So Britain created something of its own: the dance band, a regional variant whose seeds had been sown back in 1919 when the riotous Original Dixieland Jazz Band had arrived in London. They had played what sounded to British ears like banjo, clarinet, cornet and trombone all channelling different melodies at the same time. It had been confusing, but thrilling.
Hundreds of budding musicians thought they could do what the Original Dixieland Jazz Band did; the cockier ones thought they could do it better. London’s Savoy hotel had introduced its first dance outfit by 1922, and the British bands soon took on a new, localised look; in dinner jackets, with hair slicked back, they would generally be made up of seven or eight players, plus a bandleader and occasional vocalist. The repertoire was based around jazz, only streamlined and anglicised, respectable and army-disciplined. This, it turned out, was exactly what Britain wanted, with double bass and Spanish guitar smoothly replacing the sousaphone and banjo.
