Benny Goodman Is An American Jazz Musician

Benny Goodman, born Benjamin David Goodman, was an American jazz musician, clarinetist and bandleader, known as "King of Swing", "Patriarch of the Clarinet", "The Professor", and "Swing's Senior Statesman".Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from Hungary. His father, was David Guttman, a Hungarian tailor, his mother was Dora Rezinski and his actual birthname was Benő Guttman. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.

When Benny was 10, his father enrolled Benny and two 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 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, becoming a strong player at an early age. He was soon playing professionally while still 'in short pants', playing clarinet in various bands.

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. He also recorded musical soundtracks for movie shorts; some fans are convinced 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.

In 1934 Goodman auditioned for NBC's Let's Dance, a well regarded radio program that featured various styles of dance music. Since he needed new arrangements every week for the show, his agent, John Hammond, suggested that he purchase jazz charts from Fletcher Henderson, an African-American musician from Atlanta who had New York's most popular African-American band in the 1920s and early 1930s.

In July 1935, a record of the Goodman band playing the Henderson charts on "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.This had made little impact on the tour, and the last scheduled stop came on August 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, Goodman and his band 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. Realizing this, Krupa said "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing."As George Spink states:

Goodman commissioned and premiered works by leading composers for clarinet and symphony orchestra that are now part of the standard repertoire, namely Contrasts by Béla Bartók, Clarinet Concerto No. 2 Op. 115 by Malcolm Arnold, Derivations for Clarinet and Band by Morton Gould and Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto. While Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs was commissioned for Woody Herman's big band, it was premiered by Goodman. While the Ebony Concerto by Igor Stravinsky is generally also thought to be written for Goodman, it was also written for Woody Herman in 1945, and premiered by him in 1946. "Many years later Stravinsky made another recording, this time with Benny Goodman as the soloist."[24] He twice recorded Mozart's clarinet quintet, once on April 25 1938 with the Budapest String Quartet and once in the middle 1950s with the Boston Symphony Orchestra String Quartet; he also recorded the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart clarinet concerto in A major K 622 of on July 9, 1956, also with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the clarinet concertos from Carl Maria von Weber and Carl Nielsen.

Benny Goodman's band appeared as a specialty act in major musical features, including The Big Broadcast of 1937, Hollywood Hotel (1938), Syncopation (1942), The Powers Girl (1942), Stage Door Canteen (1943), The Gang's All Here (1943), Sweet and Lowdown (1944) and A Song Is Born (1948). Goodman's only starring feature was Sweet and Low Down (1944).Goodman's success story was told in the 1955 motion picture The Benny Goodman Story[28] with Steve Allen and Donna Reed. A Universal-International production, it was a follow up to 1954's successful The Glenn Miller Story. The screenplay was heavily fictionalized (Benny confessed that he and his wife would look at the finished film and laugh through it), but the music was the real drawing card. Many of Goodman's professional colleagues appear in the film, including Ben Pollack. Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton. and Harry James.