Paul Whiteman: The King of Jazz

The orchestra led by Paul Whiteman, the self-proclaimed “King of Jazz,” was one of the country’s most popular musical groups in the 1920s. Playing a blend of popular and classical music that would hardly be classified as jazz today, Whiteman sold millions of records. He did indeed begin to hone his style here in Santa Barbara.

Whiteman was born in 1890 and grew up in Denver. His father, a music supervisor for the schools, started his son on violin lessons early on. Several years later, Whiteman also took up the viola, and at age 17, he appeared as a soloist with the Denver Symphony Orchestra. In 1915, he earned the first viola chair in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition orchestra and played for a time with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. After the U.S. entered the First World War in 1917, Whiteman served at the Mare Island naval training station at San Francisco Bay. After the war, he began to move away from his classical roots, leading a band that played popular music and dance tunes at the Fairmont Hotel. In 1919, he began recruiting musicians for a new band and secured a position at Santa Barbara’s Belvedere Hotel.

Whiteman and his group arrived here to play at the grand opening of the Belvedere (formerly the Potter Hotel) as well as the opening of the Santa Barbara Horse Show. Jazz was just beginning to develop a nationwide following. Whiteman’s group very rarely swung with the kind of rhythm now associated with jazz. Rather, Whiteman offered listeners a mix of popular songs, danceable tunes, and light classics, often rearranged to give them a “jazzier” feel. For example, one of the bandleader’s first recordings was based on a song from a Puccini opera.