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,
Doc Severinsen with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. After he graduated, he went on tour with Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman. He was drafted by the Army during World War II. In 1946, he played trumpet on radio station KODL. In 1949, Severinsen got a job as a studio musician for NBC, where he accompanied Steve Allen, Eddie Fisher, Dinah Shore, and Kate Smith. The leader of "The Tonight Show" band, Skitch Henderson, asked him to be first chair trumpeter in 1962, and five years later Severinsen was leading the band. Under Severinsen's direction, the "Tonight Show" band became a