Back in the 1930s - 1940s, dancing involved everybody, - the twinkletoed and the gluefooted alike. When the music started, folks got up from their tables and started to dance, and so it followed that all bands came to be called 'Dance Bands'. Some bands featured 'Sweet' music and some were 'Hot', but most of them leaned in both directions.

Benny Goodman, acclaimed as the 'King of Swing', nevertheless was, in essence, the leader of a dance band. True, it was a dance band that leaned more toward the "hot" rather than then the "sweet". Paralleling Goodman, but on the other side of the fence, were orchestras such as Vincent Lopez, Hal Kemp, Kay Kyser, Larry Clinton and many, many others. In fact, the "Sweet" bands were, by far and away, in the majority. People just simply wanted to dance. And "Society" orchestras catered specifically to that end.

There were two types of Society Bands. The first were essentially Band Agencies. These men could conceivably have up to 50 different orchestras playing in various places in one night, under the same band name. For example, 10 different Meyer Davis bands could be playing on the same evening at 10 different social parties, all billed as 'The Meyer Davis Orchestra'.

Among the best known of these agents were:
Emil Coleman
Meyer Davis
Ernie Hecksher
Lester Lanin
Ben Selvin

Many of these men had formed their bands in the early 1920's. They catered especially to Society's Debutante Balls, and such other social gatherings.

The second group consisted of such bands (to name but a few) as,
Eddie Duchin
Anson Weeks
Ted Straeter
Gray Gordon
Shep Fields

These were single-entity, independent bands. They didn't copy themselves over and over as the Band Agents did. Usually, they were booked into a local hotel where they played dance music for the patrons. And, from this, they would often pick up gigs for society gatherings.

Some of the orchestras were basically used to back up the leader. The good example of this would be the Eddie Duchin Orchestra. Duchin was truly 'a society darling'. His band never wanted for jobs at Society's private balls and galas.

Many of these bands developed some sort of quickly recognizable sound; a gimmick that made them stand out from the more routine bands of the day. For example, Gray Gordon developed a sound using temple blocks as his trademark, and was widely known as 'Gray Gordon and his Tick Tock Rhythm'.

Shep Fields had one of the sidemen blowing bubbles through a straw in a glass of water, and his band came to be called 'Shep Fields and His Rippling Rhythm'.

It should be noted that all of these musical gimmicks were designed not only to make the band stand out, but to increase the dancing pleasure of the patrons. George T. Simon, the great Swing music writer, has called them 'Mickey Mouse Bands', but the term is not meant to be perjorative, but rather to stress that the band used a certain musical gimmick. Dance parties were the prime function for the 'Society' bands.