At 7:56 PM -0500 3/11/05, Raymond Horton wrote:
Thanks for the info. I had heard of that strike but not as completely as you write.
Wasn't there also heavy taxing of larger bands in clubs after the war that also helped the rise of small combos? Perhaps that was just in NYC?
John Howell wrote:
There was a national "entertainment tax" during the war that applied across the board. I believe it was based on the cost of admissions. My father was in the music education business at the time, and he and many others changed from a fixed admissions price for high school concerts to a "suggested donation" very specifically to get around that tax. And of course like all taxes, it hung around for years after the war was over. I don't know of any other tax that might have penalized the big bands, but there might have been something along that line.
John
There was something mentioned in the Ken Burns-PBS "Jazz" series as one reason for the rise of Bebop and the decline of big bands. I remember it as being a tax on larger bands in clubs, but the memory does not always serve.
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