Big Band and Swing Radio: The Swing Era, Live

Published 24 September 2026

You can listen to big band and swing radio online in any browser, with no download and no account: open 72FM, search for "big band" or "swing", and press play. The swing era of the 1930s and 1940s — Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, and singers such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald — was pop music for a generation, and radio was how the whole country heard it.

Big band and swing stations

• Classic Vinyl HD — jazz, swing and big band from the classic era, at 320kbps, and one of the most-voted jazz stations in the directory.
• Adroit Jazz Underground — jazz including big band, at 320kbps.
• Radio Art — Big Bands — big band orchestras.
• Big Blue Swing — swing from the United States.
• Radio1920 — from Germany, the music of the 1920s to the 40s.
• Exclusively Frank Sinatra — the voice of the swing era and after.
• Instrumentals Forever — orchestral and easy music.

Swing today

• Jazz Radio — Electro Swing — swing samples over modern beats, from France.
• Jazz Manouche / Gypsy Jazz — the swing of Django Reinhardt and his heirs, at 320kbps.

Radio and the swing era

Swing reached its audience through radio: live broadcasts from ballrooms and hotels carried the big bands into homes across America and Europe, and bandleaders became national stars on the air. The history of radio tells more, and old time radio online covers the programmes of the same era.

A route in

1. Classic Vinyl HD, for swing and big band at high quality.
2. Radio Art — Big Bands, for the orchestras.
3. Exclusively Frank Sinatra, for the singers.
4. Jazz Radio — Electro Swing, for the modern twist.

For the wider jazz tradition, jazz radio online goes further.