Paul Whiteman (March 28, 1890 – December 29, 1967) was an American jazz bandleader and composer. In a career that began in 1920 and spanned more than forty years, Whiteman led highly successful jazz dance bands that enjoyed immense critical and commercial success during the height of the Jazz Age. Whiteman was a savvy exploiter of the burgeoning mass media of his day, hosting numerous radio shows and later, appearing in movies and hosting some of the first musical variety shows on television.

Whiteman’s arrival coincided with the rise of jazz as the dominant form of popular music and radio as the dominant mass medium. Beginning in 1920, Whiteman enjoyed almost instant national success with his recordings. Within two years, Whiteman controlled twenty-eight jazz ensembles on the East Coast and was earning $1,000,000 a year ($12,700,00 in today’s dollars).

Whiteman’s style of jazz was often the first jazz of any form that most Americans heard. As the highly visible and sought-after leader of the most popular band in the US, Whiteman had thirty-two #1 recordings by 1934. (In contrast, Louis Armstrong had none during that span.) Whiteman wrote more than 3,000 arrangements, including the music for six Broadway shows, and produced over 600 recordings. At the height of his popularity in the late1920s, Whiteman and his orchestras accounted for eight of the top ten music sheets sold in the United States.

Whiteman so thoroughly dominated popular music in the US during the 1920s and early 1930s, the media frequently referred to him as "The King of Jazz."

Whiteman is all but forgotten today.