Big bands toured the nation in the '40s, playing in dance halls, nightclubs and broadcast studios. Duke Ellington's group had its nightclub shows broadcast nationwide. The big band instrumentation was commonly composed of a piano, drums, bass, saxophones, trumpets and trombones. Some included singers. A weekly radio show "Your Hit Parade" featured current hit songs, sometimes played by different bands. Some of the hits of the decade include "A String of Pearls" by Glenn Miller, "You'll Never Know" by Dick Haymes "Two O'Clock Jump" by Harry James.
Swing music uses jazz techniques such as syncopation and up-tempo. During the 1940s, not all big bands played swing. Miller's "In The Mood" and Vaughn Monroe's "Anniversary Song" are not swing songs; Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing" and Artie Shaw 's "Saint Louis Blues" are. Goodman was nicknamed the "King of Swing" after a 1935 cross-country tour that helped spread the sound. Other popular swing bands were led by Shaw, the Dorsey brothers, Count Basie, Ellington, the Elgart brothers and Louis Armstrong.
Western swing features jazz and swing elements with a country music flavor. In 1945, Spade Cooley published music called "Western Swing Folio" and that became the name of the style. Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys also played western swing. The Wills group was powered by a fiddle and guitar string band with drums. The string band was the foundation of the instrumentation. He also performed with saxophones and other brass instruments from time to time.
In the big band era, bands billed women singers as "girl" singers. There were also bands with all female performers, such as International Sweethearts of Rhythm and Darlings of Rhythm. Some of these bands had women doing all of the music, while others had men doing some work that didn't include playing in the orchestra. Girl groups started during the 1920s prohibition era like the other big bands. An all-girl big band, with a singer played by Marilyn Monroe, is featured in Billy Wilder's prohibition movie, "Some Like It Hot."