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The evolution of big band jazz music is still a heavily argued matter among jazz historians and enthusiasts as far as the time line is concerned. Most will place the beginning of the big band era at 1935. In all actuality jazz began to form into big band styles as early as the 1920's. The bands began combining elements of ragtime, black spirituals, blues, marches and soon experimented with hot jazz as well. It was these masters like Duke Ellington, Ben Pollack, Don Redman, and Fletcher Henderson that helped the big band era begin.

Most of the early big band groups spurred future big band super stars like Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Red Allen, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, and John Kirby. The early big band contributions th the full fledged era was huge. There was also an industry influence in the birth of big bands. Hotels were common ground for jazz performances and big band early pioneers found a home in the ballrooms of successful hotels and was a big influence in big band's rise of popularity.

As the forming of the term big band began to mature, the hot jazz orchestra's started to use a major component of what was to define a big band. This component was called an "arranger". Small group jazz was performed freely, it was learned that big band's needed structure and the importance of the "arranger", solidified the term of big band. Improvisation become notably only present in solo pieces of a number, while the rest of the number was assigned to different parts of the band by the arranger.

The Dorsey Brothers, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, The Casa Loma Orchestra, and Duke Ellington's orchestra began mixing in the vocals of such greats as The Mills Brothers and The Boswell Sisters and others to begin ushering in an easy style of jazz which was known as swing. Swing would inevitably become the boom of big band and its widely exposed popularity. With structure and leaders known as "arrangers", the final elements existed for this type of band to take the stage for nation wide popularity and the new craze known as swing was to finally cement the existence of big band and its existence.

The big band took the nation by huge popularity because of it's ability to move the crowds. By the mid 1930's, big band era was at it's peak and not infancy as some may claim. People began to innovate dances to the rhythm of the big band sounds. The famous lindy hop was just one of the many dances that was to become popular due to the sounds of big band's. To sum it all up, big band began to form in the 1920's, they became widely popular in the 1930's. The evolution of big band is true to the nature of that it evolved and did not simply, just arrive.

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