Reinvention of the big band

1984: Number 41 in our series of the 50 key events in the history of dance musicWhether inspired by Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Charles Mingus or Carla Bley, most big-band jazz still sounded American by the 1980s. But in 1984 came London's Loose Tubes, a workshop band that became an eclectic 21-piece orchestra, including quirky saxophonist Iain Ballamy and even quirkier pianist Django Bates. The Tubes played uninhibitedly, wittily and fearlessly, flung together many styles, and in Bates, Ballamy,...

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