The 1930s belonged to popular swing enormous bands, in which some diva soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "enormous" jazz group included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Taxi Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw.
Trumpeter, bandleader and vocalist Louis Armstrong was a much-imitated trend setter of early jazz. Swing was also dance music. It was broadcast on the radio 'live ' nightly across America for a number of years particularly by Hines and his Grand Patio Cafeteria Orchestra broadcasting coast-to-coast from Chicago, nicely placed for 'live ' time-zones. While it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians an opportunity to 'solo ' and improvise melodic, thematic solos which could on occasions be exceedingly complicated and 'important ' music. Over the passage of time social strictures re racial segregation started to relax in America : white bandleaders started to induct black musicians and black bandleaders white ones. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman employed pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, and guitar player Charlie Christian to join tiny groups. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used tiny combos, uptempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas Town Jazz in the 1930s as typified by tenor saxophone player Lester Young marked the change from gigantic bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s.