Benny Goodman

The son of poor Jewish immigrants who lived on Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood. He learned to play clarinet in a Hull House-run band. He became a strong player at an early age and began playing professionally in bands while still 'in short pants'.

His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo, and Jimmy Noone.

At the age of 16, Goodman joined one of Chicago's top bands, the Ben Pollack Orchestra, with whom he made his first recordings in 1926. He started making records under his own name 2 years later.

Goodman's father, David was a working class Jewish immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, 'Downbeat', Feb 8, 1956); "...Pop worked in the stockyards, shovelling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he'd come come 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, shovelling it around".

David Goodman was killed in a street 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 ("Benny Goodman and the Swing Era", Oxford University Press 1989): "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 through him some of the others, made of themselves. It is, truly, a sad story. 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."

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 Red Nichols, Isham Jones, and Ted Lewis before forming his own band in 1932. In 1934 he auditioned for the "Let's Dance" radio program. Since he needed new charts every week for the show, his friend John Hammond suggested that he purchase some 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 him a rising star in the mid-1930s. In early 1935, Goodman and his band were one of three bands featured on "Let's Dance", a well regarded radio show that featured various styles of dance music. His radio broadcasts from New York had been too late to attract a large audience on the East Coast, but had an avid following in California, and a wildly enthusiastic crowd for the first time greeted Goodman. He and his band were to remain on the show 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.

“I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying ‘How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult.’ I told him, ‘I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going. Because one way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn’t keep on, you’ll find ‘em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of ‘em. But if you want to do something, you do it anyway, and handle the obstacles as they come….Even to this day, I don’t like people walking on stage not looking good. You have to look good. If you feel special about yourself then you’re going to play special…Look, what I mean is this: if an individual allows his personal standard to be eroded, something of what he does is going to be compromised. It’s a matter of detail, sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it’s in music or in life, something as small as not sending a thank-you note, of failing to be polite to someone, you start to lose substance”

-- Benny Goodman