Billy Eckstine founds the first bebop big band

In 1944 Billy Eckstine formed the Billy Eckstine Orchestra, the first big band organized explicitly around the bebop aesthetic. In its three-year existence it launched the careers of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, and Sarah Vaughan, serving as the principal institutional incubator of modern jazz.