PAUL WHITEMAN and his

CONCERT ORCHESTRA

A "Pops" Concert Original 1927—1929 recordings

Paul Whiteman was born in Denver, Colorado, on 28th March, 1890, into an affluent middle-class background. His formative musical training reflected the classical inclinations of his father, Wilberforce Whiteman, a noted violinist and Musical Supervisor to the Denver Education Committee who in his spare time promoted high-school youth orchestras. From 1907 Paul was first viola (and, on occasions, second violin) with the Denver Symphony Orchestra and, from 1911, violist with the Minetti Quartet. By 1915 he was playing in the San Francisco People’s Orchestra and his first impressions of ethnic black jazz, heard in Barbary Coast dance-halls, date from that time. During World War I he served in the US Navy and led a 57-piece band stationed at Bear Island, in California and after the war fronted various nine-piece groups in fashionable, up-market white hote