Benny goodman.
King of swing.
Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from Poland who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father, David Goodman, was a tailor from Warsaw, his mother, Dora Rezinski, was from Kaunas. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.
When Benny was 10, his father signed Benny and two older brothers up for music lessons at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. The next year he joined the boys club band at Jane Addams's Hull House, where he received lessons from the director James Sylvester. Also important during this period were his 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 Jimmy Noone. Goodman learned quickly and became a strong player at an early age. He was soon playing professionally while still 'in short pants', playing clarinet in various bands.
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 two years later. Remaining with Pollack through 1929, Goodman recorded with both the regular Pollack band as well as smaller groups drawn from the orchestra. The side sessions produced scores of often hot sides recorded for the various dime-store record labels under a bewildering array of group names, such as Mills' Musical Clowns, Goody's Good Timers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, Jimmy Backen's Toe Ticklers and Kentucky Grasshoppers.
Goodman's father, David, was a working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, 'Downbeat', Feb 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, 1929 David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident shortly after Benny joined the Pollack band and had urged his father to retire, now that he (Benny) and his brother (Harry) were 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 street car — 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 beloved father had not lived to see the enormous success he, and some of the others, made of themselves. The years that the immigrant David Goodman had sweated in the stockyards and the garment lofts had paid off in a way he could never have possibly imagined, and he never got that reward."Benny described his father's death as 'the saddest thing that ever happened in our family.'"
Goodman left for New York City and became a successful session musician during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He made a reputation as a solid player who was prepared and reliable. He played with the nationally known bands of Ben Selvin, Red Nichols, Isham Jones, and Ted Lewis before forming his own band in 1932. In 1934 he auditioned for NBC's Let's Dance, a well regarded radio program that featured various styles of dance music. Since he needed new charts every week for the show, his agent, John Hammond, suggested that he purchase jazz charts from Fletcher Henderson, who had New York's most popular African-American band in the 1920s and early 1930s.
The combination of the Henderson charts, his solid clarinet playing and his well-rehearsed band made Goodman a rising star in the mid-1930s. In early 1935, Goodman and his band were one of three bands featured on Let's Dance. His radio broadcasts from New York aired too late to attract a large East Coast audience. However, the timeslot gave him an avid following on the West Coast, and a wildly enthusiastic crowd greeted Goodman for the first time in California. He and his band remained on Let's Dance until May of that year when a strike forced the cancellation of the radio show.
With nothing else to do, the band set out on a tour of America. However, at a number of engagements the band received a hostile reception, as many in the audiences expected smoother, sweeter jazz as opposed to the "hot" style that Goodman's band was accustomed to playing. By August of 1935, Goodman found himself with a band that was nearly broke, disillusioned and ready to quit. It was at this moment that everything for the band and jazz changed.
The last scheduled stop of the tour came on August 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. Goodman and his band were scheduled for a three-week engagement. The Palomar provided the ideal environment, as there was a huge dance floor with a capacity of 4,000 couples. On hand for the engagement were famed musicians Gene Krupa, Bunny Berigan, and Helen Ward. The first night, Goodman and his band cautiously began playing recently purchased stock arrangements. The reaction was, at best, tepid. Seeing the reaction, Krupa said "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing." as George Spink states:
At the beginning of the next set, Goodman told the band to put aside the stock arrangements and called for charts by Fletcher Henderson and other swing arrangers who were writing for the band. When trumpeter Bunny Berigan played his solos on Henderson’s versions of "Sometimes I'm Happy" and "King Porter Stomp," the Palomar dancers cheered like crazy and exploded with applause! They gathered around the bandstand to listen to this new music.
Over the nights of the engagement, a new dance labeled the "Jitterbug" captured the dancers on the floor, and a new craze had begun. Onlookers gathered around the edges of the ballroom floor. Within days of the opening, newspapers around the country were headlining stories about the new phenomenon that had started at the Palomar. Goodman was finally a nationally known star, and the Swing Era began, led by Goodman. Following this the big band era exploded.
In bringing jazz to Carnegie, [Benny Goodman was], in effect, smuggling American contraband into the halls of European high culture, and Goodman and his 15 men pull[ed] it off with the audacity and precision of Ocean's Eleven.
In late 1937, Goodman's publicist Wynn Nathanson attempted a publicity stunt in the form of suggesting Goodman and his band should play Carnegie Hall in New York City. "Benny Goodman was initially hesitant about the concert, fearing for the worst; however, when his film Hollywood Hotel opened to rave reviews and giant lines, he threw himself into the work. He gave up several dates and insisted on holding rehearsals inside Carnegie Hall to familiarize the band with the lively acoustics."
The concert was scheduled for January 16, 1938. It sold out weeks before, with the capacity 2,760 seats going for the top price of US$2.75 a seat, for the time a very high price. Once again, initial crowd reaction, though polite, was tepid. Some of the earlier sets, including a jam session featuring members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands as guests, did not go as well as hoped. As the concert went on, things livened up. Some of the later trio and quartet numbers were well-received, and a vocal on "Loch Lomond" by Martha Tilton, though nothing special, provoked five curtain calls and cries for an encore. The encore forced Goodman to make his only audience announcement for the night, stating that they had no encore prepared but that Martha would return shortly with another number.
By the time the band got to the climactic piece "Sing, Sing, Sing," success of the night was assured. Bettering the commercial 12-inch record, this live performance featured playing by tenor saxophonist Babe Russin, trumpeter Harry James, and then Benny Goodman, backed by drummer Gene Krupa in accompaniment. But the really unforgettable moment came when Goodman finished his solo and unexpectedly tossed the ball to pianist Jess Stacy. "At the Carnegie Hall concert, after the usual theatrics, Jess Stacy was allowed to solo and, given the venue, what followed was appropriate. Used to just playing rhythm on the tune, he was unprepared for a turn in the spotlight, but what came out of his fingers was a graceful, impressionistic marvel with classical flourishes, yet still managed to swing. It was the best thing he ever did, and it's ironic that such a layered, nuanced performance came at the end of such a chaotic, bombastic tune."
This concert has been regarded by some as the most significant in jazz history. After years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences. While the big band era would not last for much longer, it was from this point forward that the ground work for multiple other genres of popular music was laid.
Recordings were made of this concert, but even by the technology of the day the equipment used was not of the finest quality. Acetate recordings of the concert were made, and aluminum studio masters were also cut.
The recording was produced by Albert Marx as a special gift for his wife, Helen Ward and a second set for Benny. He contracted Artists Recording Studio to make 2 sets. Artists Recording only had 2 turntables so they farmed out the second set to Raymond Scott's recording studio. [...] It was Benny's sister-in-law who found the recordings in Benny's apartment [in 1950] and brought them to Benny's attention.
In early 1998, the aluminum masters were rediscovered and a new CD set of the concert was released based on these masters.