Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an Americanjazzclarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing".[1] Hisorchestra did well commercially.
From 1935 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popularswingbig bands in the United States. Hisconcert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938, 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."[2]
Goodman's bands started the careers of many jazz musicians. During an era of racial segregation, he led one of the first integrated jazz groups, his trio and quartet. He continued performing until the end of his life while pursuing an interest in classical music.
Goodman was the ninth of twelve children born to poorJewish emigrants from theRussian Empire. His father, David Goodman, came to the United States in 1892 fromWarsaw inpartitioned Poland and became a tailor.[3] His mother, Dora Grisinsky,[3] came fromKaunas. They met inBaltimore, Maryland and moved to Chicago before Goodman's birth. With little income and a large family, they moved to theMaxwell Street neighborhood, an overcrowded slum near railroad yards and factories that was populated by German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Scandinavian, and Jewish immigrants.[4]
Goodman grew up in poverty, where money was a constant problem for his family. On Sundays, his father took the children to free band concerts inDouglas Park; this was the first time Goodman experienced live professional performances. Hoping that music would offer his sons an escape from poverty and help keep them out of trouble, David Goodman enrolled ten-year-old Benny and two of his brothers in free music classes at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue, starting in 1919.[5] His older brothers were given a tuba and a trumpet, while Benny, the youngest, received a clarinet. Additionally, Benny took two years of clarinet lessons from Franz Schoepp, a classically trained clarinetist and member of theChicago Symphony Orchestra.[6][7][8] The following year, Goodman joined the boys' club band at Hull House, where he received instruction from the band director, James Sylvester. By joining the band, he had the chance to spend two weeks at a summer camp near Chicago, which was his only opportunity to escape his tough neighborhood.[4] At the age of 13, he obtained his first union card and performed on excursion boats onLake Michigan. In 1923, he played at Guyon's Paradise, a local dance hall.[9][10]
In the summer of 1923, he met thecornetist and composerBix Beiderbecke.[6] He attended the Lewis Institute (now theIllinois Institute of Technology) in 1924 as a high school sophomore and played clarinet in a dance hall band. When he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar,[11] which Goodman called "the saddest thing that ever happened in our family".[4]: 42
His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists who worked in Chicago, such asJimmie Noone,[12]Johnny Dodds, andLeon Roppolo. He learned quickly, becoming a strong player at an early age, and was soon playing in bands. He made his professional debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater on the West Side of Chicago. He enteredHarrison Technical High School in Chicago in 1922. At fourteen he became a member of the musicians' union and worked in a band featuring Bix Beiderbecke.[13] Two years later, in 1926, he joined theBen Pollack Orchestra and made his first recordings.[12]
Goodman moved to New York City and became a session musician for radio, Broadway musicals, and in studios.[14] In addition to clarinet, he sometimes played alto saxophone and baritone saxophone.[12] His first recording pressed to disc (Victor 20394) occurred on December 9, 1926, in Chicago. The session resulted in the song "When I First Met Mary", which also includedGlenn Miller,Harry Goodman, and Ben Pollack.[15] In aVictor recording session on March 21, 1928, he played alongside Miller,Tommy Dorsey, andJoe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra directed byNathaniel Shilkret.[16][17][18] He played with the bands ofRed Nichols,Ben Selvin,Ted Lewis, andIsham Jones and recorded forBrunswick under the name Benny Goodman's Boys, a band that featured Glenn Miller. In 1928, Goodman and Miller wrote "Room 1411", Miller's first known composition, which was released as a Brunswick 78.[19]
He reached the charts for the first time in January 1931 with "He's Not Worth Your Tears", featuring a vocal byScrappy Lambert forMelotone. After signing withColumbia in 1934, he had top ten hits with "Ain't Cha Glad?" and "I Ain't Lazy, I'm Just Dreamin'" sung byJack Teagarden, "Ol' Pappy" sung byMildred Bailey, and "Riffin' the Scotch" sung byBillie Holiday. An invitation to play at the Billy Rose Music Hall led to his creation of an orchestra for the four-month engagement. The orchestra recorded "Moonglow", which became a number one hit and was followed by the Top Ten hits "Take My Word" and "Bugle Call Rag".[14]
NBC hired Goodman for the radio programLet's Dance.[14]John Hammond askedFletcher Henderson if he wanted to write arrangements for Goodman, and Henderson agreed.[4]: 114 During the Depression, Henderson disbanded his orchestra because he was in debt.[20] Goodman hired Henderson's band members to teach his musicians how to play the music.[21]
Goodman's band was one of three to perform onLet's Dance, playing arrangements by Henderson along with hits such as "Get Happy" and "Limehouse Blues" bySpud Murphy.[22]
Goodman's portion of the program was broadcast too late at night to attract a large audience on the east coast. He and his band remained onLet'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 forGuy Lombardo, but the audience expected "sweet" music and Goodman's band was unsuccessful.[23]
Goodman spent six months performing onLet's Dance, and during that time he recorded six more Top Ten hits for Columbia.[14]
On July 31, 1935, "King Porter Stomp" was released with "Sometimes I'm Happy" on the B-side, both arranged by Henderson and recorded on July 1.[4]: 134 InPittsburgh at theStanley Theater some members of the audience danced in the aisles.[25] But these arrangements had little impact on the tour until August 19 at McFadden's Ballroom inOakland,California.[26] Goodman and his band, which included trumpeterBunny Berigan, drummerGene Krupa, and singerHelen Ward were met by a large crowd of young dancers who cheered the music they had heard onLet's Dance.[27] Newspaper columnistHerb Caen wrote, "from the first note, the place was in an uproar."[28] One night later, atPismo Beach, the show was a flop, and the band thought the overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke.[23][a]
The next night, August 21, 1935, at thePalomar Ballroom inLos Angeles, Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement. On top of theLet's Dance airplay,Al Jarvis had been playing Goodman's records onKFWB radio.[29] Goodman started the evening with stock arrangements, but after an indifferent response, he began the second set with arrangements byFletcher Henderson andSpud Murphy. According to Willard Alexander, the band's booking agent, Krupa said, "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing."[30] The crowd broke into cheers and applause. News reports spread word of the exciting music and enthusiastic dancing.[23] The Palomar engagement was such a marked success that it is often described as the beginning of theswing era.[23] According toDonald Clarke, "It is clear in retrospect that the Swing Era had been waiting to happen, but it was Goodman and his band that touched it off."[23]
The reception of American swing was less enthusiastic in Europe. British authorJ. C. Squire filed a complaint withBBC Radio to demand it stop playing Goodman's music, which he called "an awful series of jungle noises which can hearten no man."[4]: 243 Germany's Nazi party barred jazz from the radio, claiming it was part of aJewish conspiracy to destroy the culture. Italy's fascist government banned the broadcast of any music composed or played by Jews which they said threatened "the flower of our race, the youth."[4]: 244
In November 1935, Goodman accepted an invitation to play in Chicago at theJoseph Urban Room at theCongress Hotel. His stay there was extended to six months, and his popularity was cemented by nationwide radio broadcasts over NBC affiliate stations. While in Chicago, the band recorded "If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight)", "Stompin' at the Savoy", and "Goody Goody".[23] Goodman also played three concerts produced by Chicago socialite and jazz aficionadoHelen Oakley. These "Rhythm Club" concerts at the Congress Hotel included sets in which Goodman and Krupa sat in with Fletcher Henderson's band, perhaps the firstracially integrated big band appearing before a paying audience in the United States.[23] Goodman and Krupa played in a trio withTeddy Wilson on piano. Both combinations were well received, and Wilson remained.[31]
In his 1935–1936 radio broadcasts from Chicago, Goodman was introduced as the "Rajah of Rhythm".[30]Slingerland Drum Company had been calling Krupa the "King of Swing" as part of a sales campaign, but shortly after Goodman and his crew left Chicago in May 1936 to spend the summer filmingThe Big Broadcast of 1937 in Hollywood, the title "King of Swing" was applied to Goodman by the media.[23]
At the end of June 1936, Goodman went to Hollywood, where, on June 30, 1936, his band began CBS'sCamel Caravan, its third and (according to Connor and Hicks) its greatest sponsored radio show, co-starring Goodman and his former boss Nathaniel Shilkret.[16][17] By spring 1936, Fletcher Henderson was writing arrangements for Goodman's band.[13]
In late 1937, Goodman's publicist Wynn Nathanson suggested that Goodman and his band playCarnegie Hall in New York City. The sold-out concert was held on the evening of January 16, 1938. It is regarded as one of the most significant concerts in jazz history.[2] After years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences—according to Stan Ayeroff, "the concert helped jazz evolve from being strictly dance music to music worthy of a discerning listening audience. It was the start of jazz being recognized as an art form on a par with classical music."[32]
Recordings of the concert were made, but even by the technology of the day the equipment used was not of the finest quality. These recordings were made onacetate, and aluminum studio masters were cut.[33] The idea of recording the concert came from Albert Marx, a friend of Goodman's, for the purposes of a gift for his wife Helen Ward, as well as gifting a second set to Goodman. Sometime in or before 1950, Goodman recovered the acetates from his sister-in-law's closet, who had informed him about them, and took them to the audio engineerWilliam Savory. The pair took them to Columbia, with Goodman realising the recordings could be used as leverage to make a recording contract with Columbia (having been eager to end his contract with Capitol). A selection was then released as an LP entitledThe Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert.[4]: 365–367
Goodman with Christian in a recording studio, April 1941
In 1939, pianist and arrangerMary Lou Williams suggested to John Hammond, who was responsible for finding new talent for Goodman, that he see guitaristCharlie Christian. Hammond had seen Christian perform in Oklahoma City on July 10, 1939, and recommended him to Goodman, but Goodman was uninterested in electric guitar and was put off by Christian's taste in gaudy clothing.[34] Unbeknownst to Goodman, at an August 16 concert at the Victor Hugo Restaurant inBeverly Hills, Hammond inserted Christian onto the stage. Goodman started playing "Rose Room" on the assumption that Christian didn't know it, but his performance impressed the audience immensely.[35][36] According to Hammond, "before long the crowd was screaming with amazement. 'Rose Room' continued for more than three quarters of an hour and Goodman received an ovation unlike any even he had before. No one present will ever forget it, least of all Benny."[37]
Christian was a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet from 1939 to 1941, and during these two years he turned the electric guitar into a popular jazz instrument.[38]
Goodman continued his success throughout the late 1930s with hisbig band, his trio and quartet, and the sextet formed in August 1939, the same month Goodman returned to Columbia Records after four years withRCA Victor. At Columbia, John Hammond, his future brother-in-law, produced most of his sessions. By the mid-1940s, however, big bands had lost much of their popularity. In 1941,ASCAP had a licensing war with music publishers. From 1942 to 1944, and again in 1948, the musicians' union went on strike against the major record labels in the United States, and singers acquired the popularity that the big bands had once enjoyed. During the 1942–44 strike, the War Department approached the union and requested the production ofV-Discs, a set of records containing new recordings for soldiers, thereby boosting the rise of new artists.[39] Also, by the late 1940s, swing was no longer the dominant style of jazz musicians.[40]
Goodman (third from left) with some of his former musicians, seated around piano left to right: Vernon Brown, George Auld,Gene Krupa, Clint Neagley, Ziggy Elman, Israel Crosby andTeddy Wilson (at piano); 1952
By the 1940s, some jazz musicians were borrowing from classical music, while others, such asCharlie Parker, were broadening the rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic vocabulary of swing to createbebop (or bop). The bebop recordings Goodman made forCapitol were praised by critics. For his bebop band he hiredBuddy Greco,Zoot Sims, andWardell Gray.[41] He consulted his friend Mary Lou Williams for advice on how to approach the music of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. PianistMel Powell was also an adviser in 1945.[41] Goodman enjoyed bebop. When he heardThelonious Monk, he said, "I like it, I like that very much. I like the piece and I like the way he played it ... I think he's got a sense of humor and he's got some good things there."[41] He also admired Swedish clarinetistStan Hasselgård. But after playing with a bebop band for over a year, he returned to his swing band because he concluded that was what he knew best.[42] In 1953, he said, "Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything ... Basically it's all wrong. It's not even knowing the scales ... Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles."[4]: 354
In 1949 he studied with clarinetistReginald Kell, requiring a change in technique: "instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust hisembouchure to the use of both lips and even to use new fingering techniques. He had his old finger calluses removed and started to learn how to play his clarinet again—almost from scratch."[43]
After forays outside swing, Goodman started a new band in 1953. According to Donald Clarke, this was not a happy time for Goodman. He reunited the band to tour with Louis Armstrong. But he insulted Armstrong and "was appalled at the vaudeville aspects of Louis's act...a contradiction of everything Goodman stood for".[23] Armstrong left Goodman hanging during a joint performance where Goodman called Armstrong back onstage to wrap up the show. Armstrong refused to perform alongside Goodman, which led essentially to the end of their friendship.
Goodman in concert inNuremberg, West Germany (1971)
He continued to play on records and in small groups. In the early 1970s he collaborated withGeorge Benson after the two met taping a PBS tribute to John Hammond, recreating some of Goodman's duets with Charlie Christian.[4]: 434 Benson appeared on Goodman's albumSeven Come Eleven. Goodman continued to play swing, but he practiced and performed classical pieces and commissioned them for clarinet. In 1960 he performed Mozart's Clarinet Concerto with conductorAlfredo Antonini at the Lewisohn Stadium in New York City.[47][48] Despite health problems, he continued to perform, his last concert being six days before his death. Goodman died on June 13, 1986, of a heart attack while taking a nap at his apartment inManhattan House.[49]
One of Goodman's closest friends was Columbia producer John Hammond, who influenced Goodman's move from Victor to Columbia.[4]: 259 Goodman married Hammond's sister, Alice Frances Hammond Duckworth (1905–1978), on March 20, 1942.[50][51] The couple had two daughters: Rachel, a concert pianist, and Benji, acellist; Goodman also raised Alice's three daughters from her first marriage[52][49] to British politicianArthur Duckworth. Rachel Goodman performedpiano concerts with her father, starting when she was sixteen.[53]
Goodman and Hammond had disagreements from the 1930s onwards. For the 1939 Spirituals to Swing concert Hammond had placed Charlie Christian into the Kansas City Six to play before Goodman's band, which had angered Goodman. They disagreed over the band's music until Goodman refused to listen to Hammond. Their arguments escalated, and in 1941 Hammond left Columbia.[4]: 311 Goodman appeared on a 1975 PBS tribute to Hammond but remained at a distance. In the 1980s, after the death of Alice Goodman, Hammond and Goodman reconciled. On June 25, 1985, Goodman appeared atAvery Fisher Hall in New York City for "A Tribute to John Hammond".[54]
Goodman was regarded by some as a demanding taskmaster, by others as an arrogant and eccentric martinet. Many musicians spoke of "The Ray",[4]: 173 the glare that Goodman directed at a musician who failed to perform to his standards. After guitaristAllan Reuss incurred Goodman's displeasure, Goodman relegated him to the rear of the bandstand where his contribution would be drowned out by the other musicians. VocalistsAnita O'Day andHelen Forrest spoke bitterly of their experiences singing with Goodman: "The twenty or so months I spent with Benny felt like twenty years," said Forrest. "When I look back, they seem like a life sentence." He was generous and funded several college educations, though always secretly. When a friend asked him why, he said, "Well, if they knew about it, everyone would come to me with their hand out."[4]: 296, 301, 302, 401
"As far as I'm concerned, what he did in those days—and they were hard days, in 1937—made it possible for Negroes to have their chance in baseball and other fields."
Goodman helped racial integration in America. In the early 1930s, black and white musicians could not play together in most clubs and concerts. In the Southern states,racial segregation was enforced byJim Crow laws. Goodman hired Teddy Wilson for his trio and added vibraphonistLionel Hampton for his quartet. In 1939 he hired guitarist Charlie Christian. This integration in music happened ten years beforeJackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's six-decade-long color line. According toJazz (Episode 5) by Ken Burns, Lionel Hampton states that when someone asked Goodman why he "played with thatnigger" (referring to Teddy Wilson), Goodman replied, "If you say that again to me, I'll take a clarinet and bust you across your head with it".[55]
In 1962, the Benny Goodman Orchestra toured the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program between the two nations after theCuban Missile Crisis and the end ofthat phase of the Cold War; both visits were part of efforts to normalize relations between the United States and the USSR.[56] Members of the band includedJimmy Knepper, Jerry Dodgion, and Turk Van Lake (Vanig Hovsepian).[57] BassistBill Crow published a very colorful view of the tour and Goodman's conduct during it under the title "To Russia Without Love".[58]
1938The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert Vols. 1–3 (Columbia, 1950) reissued asCarnegie Hall Jazz Concert '38 (1998),Live at Carnegie Hall (2xLp) (CBS, 1999)Carnegie Hall_The Complete Concert (Jasmine, 2006) and other times
^Collier, in his bookBenny Goodman and the Swing Era (page 164), listed both a "McFadden's Ballroom in San Francisco" and "Sweet's in Oakland" as separate engagements for Goodman, with Pismo Beach in between. However, there was never a McFadden's or a Sweet's Ballroom in San Francisco, and the trip from there to Pismo Beach was inconveniently long. Oakland and San Francisco are about 15 miles (24 km) apart, but Pismo Beach is more than 235 miles (378 km) south of both of them. Pismo Beach is only 175 miles (282 km) from Los Angeles and would have been a more convenient place for Goodman to have played while traveling from Oakland to L.A.
^ab"Biography".Benny Goodman – The Official Website of the King of Swing. Estate of Benny Goodman. Archived fromthe original on October 30, 2010. RetrievedNovember 5, 2010.
^abShilkret, Nathaniel (2005). Shilkret, Barbara; Shell, Niel (eds.).Nathaniel Shilkret: Sixty Years in the Music Business. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.ISBN0-8108-5128-8.
^Stockdale, Robert (1995). "Tommy Dorsey on the Side".Studies in Jazz.19. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press.
^"Historic Sweet's Ballroom"(PDF).Historicsweetsballroom.com. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on July 23, 2007. RetrievedJuly 6, 2010.Originally a dance studio built in 1923, the ballroom was managed by Bill Sweet and turned into one of Oakland's best ballrooms. It was known as McFadden's in the 1930s and as Sands Ballroom in the 1970s.
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