#first herd

Herd Twice: Woody Herman in the 1940s

Woody Herman’s First and Second Herds get a nice spotlight from David Brent Johnson on his Night Lights. Bands like these only come rarely in a lifetime, and are remarkable for being trend-setting, popular and everlasting.

-Scott Wenzel

Woody Herman: Red Top, 1945

Mike Zirpolo, the host of swingandbeyond, recalls how electrifying the Woody Herman band (later known as the First Herd) was during the mid-1940s. With superb modern soloists like Flip Phillips and Bill Harris, arrangers Ralph Burns and Neal Hefti, and a powerful rhythm section driven by Chubby Jackson and Dave Tough, this band not only was a forward-thinking jazz unit, but one that scored with the public, making it one of the most favored musical organizations of its time. Red Top isn’t one of Woody’s more famous sides, mainly because he never recorded it commercially, but it ranks as one of the wildest (it has some moments that remind us of his record Goosey Gander”).

-Scott Wenzel