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5th October - Featured Artist: Benny GoodmanFeatured Artist Benny Goodman
Benny 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 the Russian Empire. 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 on Vocalion under his own name two years later. Remaining with Pollack through 1929, Goodman recorded with the regular Pollack band and 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, Dixie Daisies, and Kentucky Grasshoppers.Play List 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. Goodman, a wise businessman, caught Henderson in 1929 when the stock market crashed. He purchased all of Henderson's song books, and hired Henderson's band members to teach his musicians how to play the music. The combination of Goodman's solid clarinet playing, the Henderson charts, and the well-rehearsed band made Goodman a rising star in the mid-1930s, earning him the title "King of Swing." 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, unknown to him, the timeslot gave him an avid following on the West Coast. 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. Goodman continued his meteoric rise throughout the late 1930s with his big band, his trio and quartet, and a sextet. He influenced almost every jazz musician who played clarinet after him. However, in time the movement in jazz that he ignited in 1935 began to fade. By the mid-1940s, big bands lost a lot of their popularity. There were several reasons for this decline. In 1941, ASCAP had a licensing war with music publishers. In 1942 to 1944 and 1948, the major musicians union went on strike against the major record labels in the United States, and singers took the spot in popularity that the big bands once enjoyed. Also, by the late 1940s, swing was no longer the dominant mode of jazz musicians. After winning numerous polls over the years as best jazz clarinetist, Goodman was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1957. Goodman continued to play on records and in small groups. One exception to this pattern was a collaboration with George Benson in the 1970s. The two had met when they taped a PBS salute to John Hammond and re-created some of the famous Goodman-Charlie Christian duets. Benson later appeared on several tracks of a Goodman album released as "Seven Come Eleven." In general Goodman continued to play in the swing style he was most known for. He did, however, practice and perform classical music clarinet pieces and commissioned some pieces for the clarinet. Periodically he would organize a new band and play a jazz festival or go on an international tour. Despite increasing health problems, he continued to play the clarinet until his death from a heart attack in New York City in 1986 at the age of 77. A longtime resident of Pound Ridge, New York, Benny Goodman is interred in the Long Ridge Cemetery, Stamford, Connecticut. The same year, Goodman was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Benny Goodman's musical papers were donated to Yale University after his death. Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit Monday 6th October Gambit Jazz Band at the Southend Jazz Club, EKCO Social & Sports club in Thornford Gardens, Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea. Article by Lloyd Bonson, 5 Oct 2008 |
 
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