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Benny Goodman Benny Goodman Background information Birth name Benjamin David Goodman Also known as "King of Swing", "The Professor", "Patriarch of the Clarinet", "Swing's Senior Statesman" Born May 30, 1909 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Died June 13, 1986 (aged 77) New York, New York, U.S. Genres Swing, big band Occupation(s) Musician, bandleader, songwriter Instruments Clarinet Years active 1926–86 Website www.bennygoodman.com Benjamin David "Benny" Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing". In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music." Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz. During an era of segregation he also led one of the first well-known integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, while exploring an interest in classical music. Early years Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the lands ruled by the Russian Empire. His father, David Goodman (1873–1926) came to America in 1892 from Warsaw in the partitioned Poland, and became a tailor. His mother Dora nee Grisinsky, (1873–1964) came from Kaunas, Lithuania. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born. They lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. When Benny was 10, his father enrolled him and two of his older brothers in music lessons at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. The next year he joined the boys club band at Jane Addams' Hull House, where he received lessons from director James Sylvester. He also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp. His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists working in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo, and Jimmie Noone. Goodman learned quickly, becoming a strong player at an early age and soon playing professionally in various bands. Goodman made his professional debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater on Chicago's West Side and entered Harrison High School in Chicago in 1922. He joined the musicians’ union in 1923 and by 14 was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke. He attended Lewis Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1924 as a high school sophomore, while also playing the clarinet in a dance hall band. (He was awarded an honorary LL.D. from IIT in 1968.) When Goodman was 16, he joined one of Chicago's top bands, the Ben Pollack Orchestra, with which he made his first recordings in 1926. He made his first record under his own name for Vocalion two years later. Goodman recorded with the regular Pollack band and smaller groups drawn from the orchestra through 1929. The side sessions produced scores of sides recorded for the various dimestore record labels under an array of group names, including Mills' Musical Clowns, Goody's Good Timers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, Jimmy Backen's Toe Ticklers, Dixie Daisies, and Kentucky Grasshoppers. Goodman's father, David, was a working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, Downbeat, February 8, 1956); "...Pop worked in the stockyards, shoveling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he'd come home at the end of the day exhausted, stinking to high heaven, and when he walked in it made me sick. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the idea of Pop every day standing in that stuff, shoveling it around". On December 9, 1926, David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident. Benny had recently joined the Pollack band and was urging his father to retire, since he and his brother (Harry) were now doing well as professional musicians. According to James Lincoln Collier, "Pop looked Benny in the eye and said, 'Benny, you take care of yourself, I'll take care of myself.'" Collier continues: "It was an unhappy choice. Not long afterwards, as he was stepping down from a streetcar—according to one story—he was struck by a car. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital the next day. It was a bitter blow to the family, and it haunted Benny to the end that his father had not lived to see the success he, and some of the others, made of themselves." "Benny described his father's death as 'the saddest thing that ever happened in our family.'" Career Goodman left for New York City and became a successful session musician during the late 1920s and early 1930s, mostly with Ben Pollack's band between 1926 and 1929. A notable March 21, 1928 Victor session found Goodman alongside Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra, directed by Nat Shilkret. He played with the nationally known studio and performing bands of Ben Selvin, Red Nichols, Ted Lewis, and Isham Jones, although he is not on any of Jones' records. He recorded sides for Brunswick under the name Benny Goodman's Boys, a band that featured Glenn Miller. In 1928, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller wrote the instrumental "Room 1411", which was released as a Brunswick 78. He also recorded musical soundtracks for movie shorts; fans believe that Benny Goodman's clarinet can be heard on the soundtrack of One A. M., a Charlie Chaplin comedy re-released to theaters in 1934. During this period as a successful session musician, John Hammond arranged for a series of jazz sides recorded for and issued on Columbia starting in 1933 and continuing until his signing with Victor in 1935, during his success on radio. There were also a number of commercial studio sides recorded for Melotone Records between late 1930 and mid-1931 under Goodman's name. The all-star Columbia sides featured Jack Teagarden, Joe Sullivan, Dick McDonough, Arthur Schutt, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins (for 1 session), and vocalists Jack Teagarden and Mildred Bailey, and the first two recorded vocals by a young Billie Holiday. In 1934 Goodman auditioned for NBC's Let's Dance, a well-regarded three-hour weekly radio program that featured various styles of dance music. His familiar theme song by that title was based on Invitation to the Dance by Carl Maria von Weber. Since he needed new arrangements every week for the show, John Hammond suggested that he purchase "hot" (swing) arrangements from Fletcher Henderson, a black musician from Atlanta who had New York's most popular African-American band in the 1920s and early 1930s. An experienced businessman, Goodman helped Henderson in 1934 when the Henderson band disbanded. He let Henderson write arrangements that Fletcher, his brother Horace and wife Leora usually copied from his own records, as Fletcher had almost no scores left. The Henderson method usually had been head arrangements. Goodman hired Henderson's band members to teach his musicians how to play the music. In 1932, his career officially began with Fletcher Henderson. Although Henderson’s orchestra was at its climax of creativity, it had not reached any peaks of popularity. During the Depression, Fletcher disbanded his orchestra as he was in financial debt. In early 1935, Goodman's band was one of three bands (the others were Xavier Cugat and "Kel Murray" [r.n. Murray Kellner]) featured on Let's Dance where they played arrangements by Henderson along with hits such as "Get Happy" and "Jingle Bells" from composer and arranger Spud Murphy. Goodman's portion of the program from New York, at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, aired too late to attract a large East Coast audience. However, unknown to him, the time slot gave him an avid following on the West Coast (they heard him at 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time). He and his band remained on Let's Dance until May of that year when a strike by employees of the series' sponsor, Nabisco, forced the cancellation of the radio show. An engagement was booked at Manhattan's Roosevelt Grill (filling in for Guy Lombardo), but the crowd there expected 'sweet' music and Goodman's band was unsuccessful. The band set out on a tour of the United States in May 1935, but was still poorly received. By August 1935, Goodman found himself with a band that was nearly broke, disillusioned and ready to quit. Catalyst for the Swing era In July 1935, a record of the Goodman band playing the Henderson arrangements of "King Porter Stomp" backed with "Sometimes I'm Happy", Victor 78 25090, had been released to ecstatic reviews in both Down Beat and Melody Maker. Reports were that in Pittsburgh at the Stanley Theater some of the kids danced in the aisles, but in general these arrangements had made little impact on the band's tour until August 19 when they arrived in Oakland to play at McFadden's Ballroom. There, Goodman and his artists Gene Krupa, Bunny Berigan, and Helen Ward found a large crowd of young dancers, raving and cheering the hot music they had heard on the Let's Dance radio show. Herb Caen wrote that "from the first note, the place was in an uproar." One night later, at Pismo Beach, the show was another flop, and the band thought the overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke. The next night, August 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement.
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