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    Indeed, the modern era of Popular Music in America (and in the world) actually began with the frenzy over Benny Goodman's Swing music in the 1930s, not Elvis' Rock music in the 1950s.  Elvis might have turned up the volume, but he did not change the world as people claim.  The change began decades earlier, in part because Swing Music's popularity  coincided with technological innovations (radio and the record player) that brought music "on demand" to the homes of America.  But with this innovation, Benny Goodman--and the pop icons that accompanied him such as Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Harry James, Les Brown, Glen Gray--changed the history of music, made it more a part of our lives and our culture than it ever was before.  That innovation and revolution might seem tame and square compared when placed in modern day context, but it truly shocked the world in its day.  Nazi Germany banned Goodman's "nigger-Jew" music, and, somewhat fittingly, it became the music that helped inspire our troops to victory during World War II.  In these and more ways, Elvis was a mere a shadow of Benny Goodman in cultural significance.

    In addition to innovating and popularizing both the clarinet and the Big Band Swing sound as a whole, Goodman also helped break the stark color barrier in the music industry by hiring black musicians (most notably Lionel Hampton and pianist Teddy Wilson way back in 1936) to play with his small group and orchestra: a practice that was unheard of before he did it due in large part to the expectations and prejudices of the consumer public.  He also very openly and enthusiastically popularized music arranged and written by black composers, most notably Fletcher Henderson who had limited success as a bandleader but saw tremendous success as arranger of Goodman's band.  Goodman's influence helped desensitize white audiences to racial barriers in music.  Whether because of his humble background or because of his simple perfectionist desire to have the best musicians in his band regardless of color, Goodman's popularity helped break this color barrier through the music world.  Indisputably the most popular figure of the Swing Era, he continued to perform both Jazz and Classical music until his death in 1986.

    Biography

     The Early Years 1909-1934

     Often, the road to stardom is more interesting tale than the actual stardom, itself.  Born on May 9, 1909, Goodman grew up in the Maxwell Street ghetto on the near Southwest side of Chicago, the eighth son of twelve born to Jewish Russian immigrants David Goodman, a tailor, and Dora Rezinsky Goodman.  Although his father worked as a skilled tailor in Russia before immigrating to America, his father was relegated to a career of hard labor in the Chicago stockyards.  As a result, and typical of the dogged industriousness of Jewish immigrants, Goodman's father taught his children to develop skills that would elevate them beyond the ghetto life of a stockyard worker, as well as help support the family in the meantime.  For Benny and two of his brothers, that skill was music.

    Benny and his two brothers first began taking clarinet lessons at ten at a local synagogue as a part of its band.  Although Benny soon developed into the star of that band, the synagogue ran out of money and the band disbanded.  David brought his boys for further music training to Hull House, a charitable community center in Chicago.   (I (Lawrence) learned how to swim at Hull House in Chicago about fifty years later).  Benny's passion for music and desire to help support his family drove him to practice for at least 3 to 4 hours each day, developing the perfectionist traits for which he would become legendary throughout his career.

    In 1923, Benny made his professional debut at age 12.  Due to the Speakeasy tradition of the Prohibition Era, musicians flourished in underground clubs through the 1920s, developing a wild and frenetic style of music that would emerge into the roots of Swing music.  Benny soon began earning more money per night than his father earned in an entire week in the stockyards.  Inspired and influenced by the vibrant Chicago Jazz scene including Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, and other famous Swing musicians, Benny began to develop a name for himself even at that early age. 

    When Benny was only 14, his father died, forcing Benny to drop out of high school to become a professional musician and support his family.  At 16, in August 1925, he joined the Ben Pollack band, with which he made his first released band recordings in December 1926.  He recorded the first pieces under his own name in January 1928.  

    In September 1929, at the age of 20, Goodman left Pollack and moved to New York to work as a freelance musician.  He played as a session musician on recordings, radio gigs, and in the pit bands of Broadway musicals.  He also continued recording under his own name with pickup bands, first reaching the charts with "He's Not Worth Your Tears" on Melotone Records in January 1931.  He recorded for Decca for several years, including some legendary Pre-Swing recordings with Jack Teagarden, Glenn Miller, and Gene Krupa.  He signed to Columbia Records in the fall of 1934 and reached the Top Ten in early 1934 with "Ain't Cha Glad?" "Riffin' the Scotch" (with Billie Holiday), and "Ol' Pappy" (with Mildred Bailey), and in the spring with "I Ain't Lazy, I'm Just Dreamin.'" 

    Spurred by his success, Goodman's perfectionism drove him to form his first permanent performing orchestra, which gave its first performance on June 1, 1934. His instrumental recording of "Moon Glow" hit number one in July, and he scored two more Top Ten hits in the fall with the instrumentals "Take My Word" and "Bugle Call Rag." After a four-and-a-half-month stay at the Music Hall, he was signed for the Saturday night Let's Dance program on NBC radio, playing the last hour of the three-hour show. During the six months he spent on the show, he scored another six Top Ten hits on Columbia, then switched to RCA Victor, for which he recorded five more Top Ten hits by the end of the year.

    A Shooting Star  1934-1938

    Two seminal events in course of the Swing Era bookended this next period in Goodman's career: his performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, and his performance at Carnegie Hall in New York on January 16 1938.  The Palomar Ballroom date is often referred to in hindsight as the true beginning of the Swing Era, and the Carnegie Hall date is often labeled as Swing music coming of age, when it finally ascended to the pinnacle of popularity in America. 

    Goodman undertook a national tour in the summer of 1935, but it was not particularly successful and was, in fact, in constant jeopardy of folding along the road to the West Coast.  Thousands of enthusiastic, teenage fans flocked to hear Benny and his orchestra perform. Never before had Benny or swing music received that kind of attention from audiences. The media nicknamed him "the King of Swing."until he reached the West Coast, where his segment of Let's Dance had been heard three hours earlier than on the East Coast.  His performance at the Palomar Ballroom near Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, was a spectacular success, remembered as the date on which the Swing Era began. He moved on to a six-month residency at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, beginning in November. He scored 15 Top Ten hits in 1936, including the chart-toppers "It's Been So Long," "Goody-Goody," "The Glory of Love," "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You," and "You Turned the Tables on Me" (all vocals by Helen Ward). He became the host of the radio series The Camel Caravan, which ran until the end of 1939, and in October 1936, the orchestra made its film debut in The Big Broadcast of 1937. The same month, Goodman began a residency at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York.

    Goodman's next number one hit, in February 1937, featured Ella Fitzgerald on vocals and was the band's first hit with new trumpeter Harry James.  It was also the first of six Top Ten hits during the year, including the chart-topping "This Year's Kisses."  In December 1937, the band appeared in another film, Hollywood Hotel.  In 1937, Benny went on to perform at the Paramount Theatre in New York where an audience of thousands of frenzied teenagers danced in the aisles and screamed wildly for the band.

    The peak of Goodman's renown in the 1930s came on a cold Sunday, January 16, 1938, when he performed a concert at Carnegie Hall.  Legends abound regarding this concert.  It brought black and white musicians together on the stage of the hoighty-toity Carnegie Hall, home of Mozart concertos and stiff-upper-lip audiences.  Although Paul Whiteman (the "King of Jazz" in the 1920s) had played Jazz there, already, Whiteman's all-white band was reknown for its tameness, especially compared to the energetic music of the Swing Era.  In modern terms, the event was like Snoop Doggy Dog or Public Enemy playing at the Met.

    Thousands of people showed up in the streets for the show.  Some rumors number the crowd at two to three times the number that could actually fit inside Carnegie Hall.  

    The band had a new, untitled song for that concert that they passed out to the band for the first time onstage at Carnegie Hall during rehearsal.  One of the promoters asked Benny to start with a tamer number respectful of the fact that they were at Carnegie Hall.  According to movie legend, Benny responded, "Don't Be That Way," giving the new song its accidental title.  The song would become a huge hit and one of the most seminal Jazz standards of the Swing Era and beyond.  During the performance, though, the song did start somewhat lame and one can hear the tension and nerves of the musicians manifested in their performance.  Gene Krupa--famous for his wild-arm drumming twenty years before Keith Moon even picked up a drumstick--noticed the lethargic play, and kicked into a drum riff on a break out of a subdued moment that shattered the nervous mood.  The band erupted into a frenzied final chorus, bringing the elite crowd to their feet.

    In the middle of the show, Count Basie and key members of his Big Band joined Goodman on stage for a mostly-improvised  jam session of Fats Waller's Honeysuckle Rose, featuring almost an exhaustive list of "who's-who" in the Swing Era.  The jam featured solos (in order) by Lester Young on sax, then Basie on piano, then Buck Clayton on trumpet, followed by Johnny Hodges (from Duke Ellington's orchestra) on sax, Benny Goodman on clarinet, and, finally, Harry James on trumpet.  All throughout, the soft, fast, steady rhythm of Krupa on drums and Walter Page on bass gives the music an underlying, feeling of floating softly but swiftly through the wild musical riffs of those mater soloists.  Jazz jams are as commonplace today as Jazz music, itself, is, but, again, it was unheard of in 1938 to bring unrehearsed, wholly-improvised music, by a group of integrated, soon-to-be-legendary musicians who did not ordinarily play together, all inside the walls of Carnegie Hall.

    The Big Band left the stage to a trio and then a quartet of Krupa and Goodman along with Lionel Hampton on vibes and Teddy Wilson on Piano.  This small group, originated during a West Coast tour in 1936, would go on to record a series of hits after the concert.  Their performance culminated in Hampton virtually bashing the tar out of the vibes at the end of "I Got Rhythm."

    Unbeknownest to Goodman and his orchestra, and rather fortunately for posterity, the concert was recorded, and two copies were made: one for the Library of Congress and one for Goodman.  Goodman lost track of his copy until his daughter found it in a closet 12 years later in 1950.  Columbia released it, and it became an instant hit amidst the Rock and Roll of Elvis and Chubby Checker.  It became a runaway bestseller and spent a year in the charts, becoming the best-selling jazz album ever up to that time.  It's success also cemented January 16, 1938 one of the most important dates in the history of Jazz music, not just the Swing Era.

    Goodman went on to score 14 Top Ten hits in 1938, among them three number ones "Don't Be That Way" (an instrumental) and "I Let a Song Go out of My Heart," as well as the thrilling instrumental "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)."  His rise to the "King of Swing" was complete.

    The War Years  1939-1945

    Although the U.S. did not enter the War until 1941, the wartime economy and social envionment certainly characterized the next period of Goodman's career, as well as Swing music's association with World War II.  By 1939, Goodman had lost such major instrumentalists as Gene Krupa and Harry James, who left to found their own bands, and he faced significant competition from newly emerged bandleaders such as Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller.  When Artie Shaw famously walked off the bandstand to abandon his band and wander off to Mexico, he hired Shaw's singer, Helen Forrest, beginnign a volitle relationship with one of the best female vocalists of the Era.   He still managed to score eight Top Ten hits during the year, including the chart-topper "And the Angels Sing" with Forrest.  

    In November, he appeared in the Broadway musical Swingin' the Dream, leading a sextet.  The show was short-lived, but it provided him with his first number one hit song of 1940, "Darn That Dream."  "Slowed" by illness, Goodman only produced two other number one hits in 1940.  In July he disbanded temporarily and underwent surgery for a slipped disk, not reorganizing until October.  Goodman suffered physical ailments for the rest of life, living through pain.

    He scored two Top Ten hits in 1941, one of which was the chart-topper "There'll Be Some Changes Made," and he returned to radio with his own show.  He recruited a previously-unknown teenager, Peggy Lee, to replace Helen Forrest, whose relationship with Goodman deteriorated to the point where he refused out of spite to let her out of her contract, and forced her to sit on the bandstand for a month watching Peggy Lee sing Forrest's parts.  Among his three Top Ten hits in 1942 were the number ones "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place" with Peggy Lee and the instrumental "Jersey Bounce." He also appeared in the film Syncopation, released in May.

    American entry into World War II and the onset of the recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians in August 1942 made things difficult for all musicians.  Based on material recorded before the ban started, Goodman scored a couple of Top Ten hits, including the number one "Taking a Chance on Love" (vocal by Helen Forest), in 1943, drawn from material recorded before the start of the ban. And he used his free time to work in films, appearing in three during the year: The Powers Girl (January), Stage Door Canteen (July), and The Gang's All Here (December).

Goodman disbanded in March 1944. He appeared in the film Sweet and Low-Down in September and played with a quintet in the Broadway revue Seven Lively Arts, which opened December 7 and ran 182 performances. Meanwhile, the musicians union strike was settled, freeing him to go back into the recording studio. In April 1945, his compilation album Hot Jazz reached the Top Ten on the newly instituted album charts. He reorganized his big band and scored three Top Ten hits during the year, among them "Gotta Be This or That" (vocal by Benny Goodman), which just missed hitting number one. "Symphony" (vocal by Liza Morrow) also came close to hitting number one in early 1946, and Benny Goodman Sextet Session did hit number one on the album charts in May 1946. Goodman hosted a radio series with Victor Borge in 1946-1947, and he continued to record, switching to Capitol Records. He appeared in the film A Song Is Born in October 1948 and meanwhile experimented with bebop in his big band. But in December 1949, he disbanded, though he continued to organize groups on a temporary basis for tours and recording sessions.

    If popular music had largely passed by Goodman as of 1950, his audience was not tired of listening to his vintage music. He discovered a recording that had been made of his 1938 Carnegie Hall concert and Columbia Records released it on LP in November 1950 as Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, Vol. 1 & 2.   A follow-up album of airchecks, Benny Goodman 1937-1938: Jazz Concert No. 2, hit number one in December 1952. The rise of the high fidelity 12" LP led Goodman to re-record his hits for the Capitol album B.G. in Hi-Fi, which reached the Top Ten in March 1955. A year later, he had another Top Ten album of re-recordings with the soundtrack album for his film biography, The Benny Goodman Story, in which he was portrayed by Steve Allen but dubbed in his own playing.

After a tour of the Far East  and the Soviet Union in 1956-1957, Goodman increasingly performed overseas. His 1962 tour of the U.S.S.R. resulted in the chart album Benny Goodman in Moscow. In 1963, RCA Victor staged a studio reunion of the Benny Goodman Quartet of the 1930s, featuring Goodman, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton. The result was the 1964 chart album Together Again! Goodman recorded less frequently in his later years, though he reached the charts in 1971 with Benny Goodman Today, recorded live in Stockholm. His last album to be released before his death from a heart attack at 77 was Let's Dance, a television soundtrack, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band.

After 1963 Goodman recorded less and less, preferring the simplicity of occasional concerts that let him play where and when he chose. And much of what he chose to play was Weber and Debussey. His classical performances, which began with the Mozart Quintet in 1938 and would include several important commissions, continued as a subtext throughout his career. Into the '80s neither the Goodman legend nor the Goodman clarinet technique faded significantly. He died in his sleep on June 13, 1986 after rehearsing for a Mozart performance at Lincoln Center.

Goodman's lengthy career and his popular success especially in the 1930s and '40s has resulted in an enormous catalog. His major recordings are on Columbia and RCA Victor, but Music Masters has put out a series of archival discs from his personal collection, and many small labels have issued airchecks. The recordings continue to demonstrate Goodman's remarkable talents as an instrumentalist and as a bandleader. — William Ruhlmann

PBS biography
Allmusic Guide Biography

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