Loading details…
Artist
Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band
12+ albums
jazzBig Bandmodern jazzModern Big Bandinstrumental
about
Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band was an American big band led by instrumentalist, composer, arranger, and conductor Gordon Goodwin (died 2025). “Every time we make a record or play a show, we’re trying to tap into that fundamental, universal rhythm of big band music that seems to transcend the generations,” says Goodwin. “We’ll get middle school and high school kids coming to our shows and buying our CDs, we’ll get their parents, and we’ll get their grandparents. What other kind of music has that range of demographic appeal?” Born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1954, Goodwin moved with his family to California when he was only two. At a very early age, so his mother told him, he would tune in to The Mickey Mouse Club on TV and stand in the middle of his living room, pretending to conduct the orchestra. It seemed innocent enough, but it was just the beginning. By the time he reached grade school, he was studying piano and saxophone – two instruments on which he excels to this day. While his classmates in junior high and high school were tuning in to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Motown and other iconic rock and pop artists of the ’60s, Goodwin was charting his own big band compositions and grooving to icons of a different era: Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Buddy Rich and Thad Jones. By the early ’70s, he was able to establish a stronger connection to the soundtrack of his generation via bands like Earth Wind & Fire, Blood Sweat & Tears and others that grafted elements of jazz an
