APPRECIATIONS : Charlie Barnet: Swinging Jazz Pioneer

Charlie Barnet, who died Tuesday in La Jolla at 77, was one of a kind. Nobody who ever worked for him derived anything but joy from the association, because Barnet had the happiest, loosest, wildest band of the whole swing era.

Perhaps more important, he was also a pioneer in integration. As Barnet observed in his autobiography, “The Swinging Years,” “Benny Carter, already famous as a saxophonist, was also an accomplished trumpet player, and he would sit in with our trumpet section. . . . So you could say that ours was the first mixed band. Benny Goodman had not gotten into that yet.” This was in 1934.

In 1940 Lena Horne was his band singer for several months. At one point Barnet had five black sidemen; when he appeared in the movie “Jam Session” they were allowed to record the sound track, but on camera five white actors sat in their places.

Barnet also had the first white band to play the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

Many thought he had the swinging-est white-led band of them all. He and Duke Ellington were mutual admirers; Barnet’s recording of Ellington’s “Rockin’ in Rhythm” rivaled the Ellington version in popularity.

After several years of modest success, he recorded “Cherokee” in July, 1939. It became a huge seller, and for the next few years Barnet was riding high, hiring top sidemen--Billy May was his chief arranger and trumpeter--and composing some of the best music himself.

Though his years in the big time were brief (he broke up his original band in 1945), his achievements were unique. As he wrote, his was “a somewhat revolutionary band that tried to widen the rhythmic and harmonic scope of already-existing patterns, not destroy them and degenerate into an unmusical sound and lyrical gibberish.”

Happily, his recordings are still around to justify the pride he took in those truly swinging years.