One of Neal Hefti's earliest hits was for Woody Hermans' 2nd herd in 1947 with the chart " The Good Earth". This arrangement shows the changing of big band music from swing to modern jazz and the more modern voicings of the instruments, styling, the non-dancible tempo vs a dancible swing jitterbug beat, etc, that you hear today with modern jazz charts vs the swing charts from the earlier 1940's. A great CD that shows the transition is a Columbia CD of Woody Herman's music cira 1945-47. You can hear the difference literally, when you get to Hefti's "The Good Earth" on the album as you'll hear the modern arrangment style in that chart. From that point on, the new charts Herman used were in the style of Hefti's "Good Earth" and eventually progressed past that arrangement as the years went on, but Hefti's arrangement cut the path. Another great album that is on CD that is made up of Hefti charts is the Count Basie album "The Atomic Mr. Basie". If I remember correctly this album was made in the late 1950's and early 1960's, but it shows Hefti at his best. Great charts and all in stereo featuring a great Basie Band.
Hefti, as well as Woody Herman were innovators. A side note, I've got a CD of Woody Herman taken from a couple of his albums recorded in the mid to late 1960's where Herman has some innovative charts using some 60's sounds with his big band that work quite well (Woody Herman wasn't locked into using only old songs from the swing era as many of the other big bands tended to be). The plus to that album is it is recorded in stereo where as many of his other albums are monaural (mono) generally taken from 78 rpms from the 1930-40's.
If you want to hear the transistion from a more dixieland jazz to swing, I recommend the "Vintage Goodman" columbia album (don't know if it's available on CD, I have the 33 1/3 from years ago. It features charts from 1931-35 with Goodman's earlier band where the song was a blues/ dixieland/ 1920's sound with tunes like Basin Street Blues, Your Mother Son in law (which was sung by 16 year old Billie Holliday - this was the first time she ever sang into a microphone, according to the data on the album cover (she sounds nothing like the great jazz legend we all are familar with). But you get to hear the transisition from the 1920's jazz/dixieland to swing with that album that marked Benny Goodman's career.
