THE MAIN SAVOY HOUSE BANDS

Although in their hey-day the Savoy House Bands were widely recognised and valued for the intense swinging characters subsequently, apart from Chick Webb, they have seldom got the recognition they deserved. A lot of this has to do with their failure to make recordings of sufficient quality which many subsequent jazz writers base their understanding of the subject on. Gunther Schuller dismisses two of the great Savoy house bands - the "Savoy Sultans" and the "Teddy Hill Orchestra" - in this manner because of the weakness of their recorded material. Many observers who actually went to the Savoy have asserted that these bands during their best times could blow away any competition that came into the Savoy. This highlights the problem of relying on jazz history that is written by people who base their scholarship almost entirely on listening to old records. The importance of the house bands lies in the fact that they depended on their rapport with the Savoy dancers for the continuation of their tenure there and as a result developed special insights into swing that other musicians did their best to copy. Many of the better-known white bands sent individual musicians uptown to "sit in" with the Savoy house bands in order to get to grips with the real thing!

The information on this page is brief, and needs greater precision and more qualification. Any help that can be offered in terms of providing dates and the respective lists of band members for the periods they played the Savoy would be most welcome.

1926-8
Fess Williams and his Royal Flush Orchestra
Leon Abbey and the Charleston (later Savoy) Bearcats

1928-31
Lloyd (and later the Cecil) Scott Band

1931
Claude Hopkins

1932
Jimmy Lunceford

1933-39
Chick Webb
Willy Bryant
Teddy Hill
Savoy Sultans
Benny Carter

1939-46
Savoy Sultans
Lucky Millinder Orchestra
Ella Fitzgerald (later Eddie Barefield) Orchestra
Cootie Williams
Erskine Hawkins

1946-58
Erskine Hawkins Orchestra
Buddy Johnson Orchestra
Tab Smith Band
Buddy Tate Orchestra