Jazz band but a few early jazz musicians such as Alcide Nunez preferred the C soprano clarinet, and many New Orleans jazz brass bands have used an E soprano clarinet. Swing clarinetists such as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and Woody Herman led successful big bands and smaller groups from the 1930s onward. Band leader Duke Ellington, active from the 1920s to the 1970s, used the clarinet as the lead instrument in his works, with several players of the instrument (Barney Bigard, Jimmy Hamilton and Russell Procope) spending a significant portion of their careers in his orchestra. Harry Carney, primarily Ellington's baritone saxophonist,
Elkhart Band Instrument Company Elkhart Band Instrument Company Elkhart Band Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer in Elkhart, Indiana. The company was founded in 1923 by Andrew Hubble Beardsley (b Dayton Ohio 25 September 1864; d New York NY 10 October 1936), who was the president of Buescher Band Instrument Company, and Carl Dimond Greenleaf (b Wauseon, Ohio 27 July 1876; d Elkhart 10 July 1959), president of C.G. Conn, and who served the new company as secretary-treasurer. The company produced "Elkhart" branded band instruments as well instruments to be sold under merchandisers' brands ("stencil" instruments). Instruments produced by the company had an