ABSTRACT
American tenor saxophone player and big band leader, born in New York. After working with various bands across the U.S. he formed his own group in 1933, performing mostly in New York hotels. A second band, organized in 1936, featured the Modernaires, a vocal swing group. Another band, formed in 1938, was his best ensemble. It had fine arrangements by Billy May, one being Barnet’s great hit, “Cherokee” (Bluebird 10373). Lena Horne and Kay Starr were among his vocalists in the 1940s, when the band was at its peak, appearing in several motion pictures. With the decline of the big band era, Barnet became much less active, although he continued to record sporadically for Verve, Capitol, and other labels, making his last recording in 1966. He died in San Diego, California. In the mid-1970s, RCA reissued Barnet’s complete Bluebird recordings on six two-LP sets. In 1996, the French label EPM Musique began a similar reissue series on CD in its Jazz Archives series.
