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,
York Band Instrument Company York Band Instrument Company The York Band Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. James Warren York was a former army musician and played professionally in the Grand Rapids, Michigan theaters. He eventually decided to open his own instrument repair business and set up on the ground floor of a Monroe Avenue building in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1882. The early company originally started from a merger of two partnerships between "Smith and York" in 1883 and "York and Holton" in 1885. Together they were eventually reformed into the "J.W.York and Company". In 1887, to recognize