page_title: Stan Kenton
section_title: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Stan Kenton / Career / 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Stan Kenton Big Band 1973
context_page_description: Stanley Newcomb Kenton was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.
context_section_description: The transition from Capitol to Creative World Records in 1970 was fraught with difficulties during a time when the music business was changing rapidly. As a viable jazz artist who was trying to keep a loyal but dwindling following, Kenton turned to arrangers such as Hank Levy and Bob Curnow to write material that appealed to a younger audience.  The first releases for the Creative World label were live concerts and Kenton had the control he wanted over content but lacked substantial resources to engineer, mix, and promote what Capitol underwrote in the past. Kenton would take a big gamble to bypass the current record industry and rely far more on the direct mail lists of jazz fans which the newly formed Creative World label would need to sell records.  Kenton also made his print music available to college and high-school stage bands with several publishers.
  Kenton continued leading and touring with his big band up to his final performance in August 1978.
  In June 1973 Bob Curnow had started as the new artists and repertoire manager overseeing the whole operation of the Creative World Records.  It was just the year before (in 1972) the Kenton orchestra recorded the National Anthems of the World double LP with 40 arrangements all done by Curnow. As per Curnow himself, "That was a remarkable and very difficult time for me. I was managing (Stan's) record company with NO experience in business, writing music like mad, living in a new place and culture (Los Angeles was another world), traveling a LOT (out with the band at least 1 week a month) and trying to keep it together at home."
  When Kenton took to the road during the early 1970s and up to his last tour, he took with him seasoned veteran musicians (John Worster, Willie Maiden, Warren Gale, Graham Ellis and others) teaming them with relatively unknown young artists, and new arrangements (including those by Hank Levy, Bill Holman, Bob Curnow, Willie Maiden and Ken Hanna) were used. Many alumni associated with Kenton from this era became educators (Mike Vax, John Von Ohlen, Chuck Carter, Lisa Hittle and Richard Torres), and a few went on to take their musical careers to the next level, such as Peter Erskine and Tim Hagans.
caption: Stan Kenton with his band in Münich, Germany, September 1973
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