The History of Jazz (29 page)

Benny Goodman sent this apparatus into motion with a vengeance. In the process, he ignited not only his own amazing career, but set off a craze for “swing music” that would last over a decade. Popular music had never seen the like before. Not with Al Jolson or Russ Columbo. Not with Bing Crosby or Rudy Vallee. Certainly not with the early pioneers of jazz. In a very real way, the phenomenon of Goodman—as distinct from his music—set the blueprint for stardom, with its celebration of an almost religious fervor in “fans” (again, a new concept), one that would repeat cyclically with Frank Sinatra and the bobby-soxers, the cult of Elvis, Beatlemania, and on and on.

It is meant as no criticism of Benny Goodman to point out the benefits he extracted from these economic and technological factors. Unlike so many other targets of mass adulation, Goodman’s impeccable musicianship and consummate artistry made him a deserving candidate for such acclaim. Few figures in the history of popular culture have demonstrated such an expansive view of the musical arts. Even a cursory list of Goodman’s achievements makes one sit up and take notice: as a soloist he defined the essence of the jazz clarinet as no other performer before or since; as a bandleader, he established standards of technical perfection that were the envy of his peers, while his influence in gaining widespread popularity for swing music was unsurpassed; a decade later he reformed his ensemble to tackle the nascent sounds of bop music—a move that few of his generation would have dared make; in the world of classical music, Goodman not only excelled as a performer, but also commissioned a host of major works—Béla Bartók’s
Contrasts
, Aaron Copland’s
Concerto for Clarinet
, Paul Hindemith’s
Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra
, and Morton Gould’s
Derivations for Clarinet and Band
, among others. At a time when jazz players were often treated as a musical underclass, Goodman used his preeminence to break through the many barriers—of racial prejudice, of class distinctions, of snobbery and close-mindedness—that served only to stultify and compartmentalize the creative spirit.

Goodman’s parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe—his father, David Goodman, from Poland, his mother, Dora Rezinsky, from Lithuania—as part of the great wave of Jewish settlement in the United States that took place during the closing years of the nineteenth century. The couple met in Baltimore but moved to Chicago in 1902, where David could ply his trade as a tailor in the local garment industry. In this great melting pot of cultures—some 80 percent of Chicago’s population were either first-or second-generation immigrants during those years—Benny Goodman was born, the ninth of twelve children, on May 30, 1909. He was raised in the impoverished and often dangerous Maxwell Street neighborhood, commonly called Bloody Maxwell, where a variety of ethnic gangs held sway over a bleak urban landscape. In such an environment, music was a godsend, not only as a creative outlet or a sign of middle-class refinement, but simply as a way out of the ghetto.

David Goodman, sensing the opportunities for even youngsters to earn a livelihood as instrumentalists, prodded his children into musical studies. Along with his brothers Freddy and Harry, Benny was enlisted by his father in a band that rehearsed at the neighborhood synagogue. Only ten years old and the youngest of the three boys, Benny was deemed too small to handle one of the larger horns and was instead assigned a clarinet. In addition to regular rehearsals, Goodman undertook private lessons, first from a local bandleader but later from Franz Schoepp, a former faculty member of the Chicago Musical College whose other students included Jimmie Noone and Buster Bailey, two of the finest jazz clarinetists of their day. Noone’s work, in particular, would come to exert a powerful influence over Goodman’s conception of the clarinet.

Motivated as much by his own perfectionist tendencies as by his father’s ambitions, Benny practiced with diligence. Under different circumstances, a symphonic career might have beckoned. But, coming of age during the great period of Chicago jazz, Goodman found himself drawn into the maelstrom of musical activity taking place in the nightclubs, speakeasies, and dance halls of his hometown. During his freshman year in high school, Benny became acquainted with the various members of the Austin High Gang, and some part of their devotion to the jazz art may have rubbed off on him. In the summer of 1923, Goodman met and played with Bix Beiderbecke, and though the cornetist was only nineteen years old, his playing was already distinctive enough to make an impression on the young clarinetist. One hears Bix’s influence very clearly on the early Goodman recording of “Blue and Broken-Hearted.” Indeed, Goodman’s mature style—with its surprising intervallic leaps, its supple yet relaxed swing, on-the-beat phrasing, and sweet tone—would retain a set of musical values similar to Beiderbecke’s.

Goodman’s professional career, which had started in his early teens, took a major step forward when he joined the Ben Pollack band in 1925, initiating a four-year association that provided him with chances to tour and record, as well as to build his reputation in the context of one of the finest Chicago-style dance bands of the day. Goodman’s work from this period is marked by his assured command of the clarinet, while the influence of various Chicago clarinetists—Noone and Teschemacher, in particular—lurks only slightly below the surface. After leaving Pollack in 1929, Goodman began freelancing as a sideman and occasional leader. “After Awhile” and “Muskrat Ramble,” recorded under his own name in August of that year, are still very much in the Chicago/New Orleans vein. But Goodman was also listening carefully to the more progressive black dance bands of the day. His stint with Pollack in New York had allowed him to hear Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom and Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club. The society dance bands, led by Whiteman and others, no doubt also caught his attention during this period.

Certainly Goodman needed to draw on all these sources of inspiration as he struggled to make a name for himself during the Great Depression. Studio work, pit-band gigs, and other freelance projects required him to prove his versatility in a wide variety of contexts. The sheer quantity of Goodman’s output during these years is staggering: during the early 1930s he recorded hundreds of sides in dozens of ensembles. Sometimes these settings were jazz of the highest order—as in a remarkable 1930 date under Hoagy Carmichael’s leadership that also featured Bix Beiderbecke, Bubber Miley, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Bud Freeman, Gene Krupa, and Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey (this all-star lineup reportedly received $20 per head for the session)—but more often the music at hand in these freelance gigs was too tepid for a soloist with Goodman’s natural instincts for the hot.

The most fruitful collaboration of these years may have been one that Goodman pursued off the bandstand. John Hammond, a Yale dropout and member of the wealthy Vanderbilt family who would come to make a career out of his advocacy for jazz music and civil rights, introduced himself to the clarinetist one evening in the fall of 1933. Hammond announced that he had just returned from England, where he had contracted to produce recordings by Goodman and others for the Columbia and Parlophone labels. This unexpected intervention on his behalf would represent a major turning point in Goodman’s career. Under Hammond’s guidance, he would record with many of the leading musicians in the jazz world. Sessions conducted under Goodman’s leadership during October found Jack Teagarden contributing some of his finest recorded work, including “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.” The following month, Goodman made an uncharacteristic appearance at a Bessie Smith session, and three days later, he recorded with seventeen-year-old Billie Holiday. Other dates from this period find him working alongside Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Wilson, and other major jazz talents.

The exact degree of Hammond’s influence on Goodman’s career is open to debate. In time, the pair’s relationship would extend well beyond work, growing into friendship and eventually a family tie when Goodman married Hammond’s sister Alice. In Goodman’s professional career, the impresario was soon handling much more than just the mechanics of setting up recording dates, and his impact made itself felt in the hiring of sidemen, the selection of repertoire, and other important decisions. Above all, Hammond’s relentless prodding, his championing of authentic jazz in the face of watered-down imitations, could only serve to reinforce Goodman’s better instincts, and may well have precipitated Goodman’s final break with the commercial music of his freelance years and the wholehearted plunge into the hotter style that would earn him the sobriquet “the King of Swing.”

Contrary to conventional accounts, Goodman’s eventual triumph—signaled by his breakthrough performance at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, a date now conventionally cited as the birth of the Swing Era—was anything but an overnight success. The groundwork for this event had been slowly put in place over the preceding months, with many setbacks along the way. Exactly fourteen months prior to the Palomar date, the opening of Billy Rose’s Music Hall, at Fifty-second and Broadway, allowed Goodman to leave behind studio work for the more glamorous activity of leading a band in one of New York’s most elegant nightspots. But this apparent big break proved to be a blind alley. Rose’s venue closed its doors within weeks. The next promising opportunity for Goodman also fell through when a proposed overseas tour failed to materialize. But if high-profile engagements on the bandstand were hit-and-miss in the midst of the Great Depression, the growing radio industry presented an appealing—and possibly even more career-enhancing—alternative. Goodman embraced the new medium wholeheartedly when NBC offered his band the chance to be featured on the new
Let’s Dance
program, which showcased three hours of music every Saturday on over fifty affiliate stations across the country. More than anything, this move paved the way for the following year’s rags-to-riches tour to the West Coast. Because of the time difference, California audiences heard
Let’s Dance
during peak listening hours. The result: a large, enthusiastic audience was waiting for his band when it arrived for the momentous Palomar gig.

Goodman’s prickly personality and autocratic approach to bandleading have been the subject of much criticism. But few could doubt his commitment to the highest quality standards in sidemen, in charts, in rehearsals, and in performance. And almost from the start of the
Let’s Dance
period, these efforts began to pay off. The addition of Bunny Berigan, the finest of the white disciples of Armstrong among the New York trumpeters, provided Goodman with a world-class brass soloist to match his reed stylings. Berigan’s tone conveyed a majestic assurance, at times an audacity, but never lost its emotional pungency. His career would peak with his 1937 recording of “I Can’t Get Started,” a jazz masterpiece and popular success made with his own band. But, by 1940, this Olympian talent was bankrupt, drinking heavily, and in a precarious state of physical and mental health. Two years later, Berigan, only thirty-three years old, would succumb to cirrhosis and internal bleeding—a tragic ending for an impetuous soloist who, during his stint with the band that set off the Swing Era, seemed destined for greatness. Singer Helen Ward, who joined the band in 1934, may have lacked the deep jazz roots of Goodman and Berigan, but her captivating stage presence and forthright style of singing, with its light swing and supple phrasing, contributed greatly to the ensemble’s wide appeal. But just as important as the performers—perhaps even more critical in this instance—were the arrangers. NBC’s budget allowed for eight new charts each week, an extraordinary luxury for a bandleader, and Goodman was determined to make the most of this munificence. Goodman’s hiring of Fletcher Henderson as an arranger has typically been cited as the major turning point in the evolution of the band’s sound. Certainly Henderson’s impact was great—perhaps even decisive—in the band’s success, but he was only one of a number of outstanding arrangers who contributed to the group’s repertoire during the prewar years. Spud Murphy, Jimmy Mundy, Horace Henderson, Eddie Sauter, Mel Powell, Joe Lippman, Deane Kincaide, Gordon Jenkins, Fud Livingston, Benny Carter, Mary Lou Williams, and Edgar Sampson, among others, also made greater or lesser contributions. In aggregate they constituted an impressive roster of composing and arranging talent that no other dance orchestra of the period could match, let alone surpass.

The special nature of Henderson’s contribution lay in his access to a gold mine of material compiled during his own lengthy stint as a bandleader, as well as in his deep sensitivity to the swing style that was about to dominate American airwaves. And though Henderson was responsible for somewhat less than half of the band’s book, he was the source for many of the most memorable Goodman charts: “King Porter Stomp,” “Sometimes I’m Happy,” “Blue Skies,” and “Christopher Columbus,” among others. In the racially charged atmosphere of the day, the symbolic importance of Henderson’s role with the Goodman band loomed almost as large as the music itself. Many jazz enthusiasts rejoiced in Goodman’s conscious decision to emulate the hotter music of the Henderson orchestra—a direction that few white bands of the day were then taking—and bring this swinging style to the attention of the mass market. Others were less pleased at this state of affairs, castigating Goodman as one more white musician who managed to build his personal success by exploiting the achievements of black innovators. Yet our concern with the social ramifications of the Goodman-Henderson relationship should not blind us to the influence of personal factors on this important nexus in the history of jazz. Goodman, driven to achieve success no matter what obstacles lay in his course, was prepared to champion swing music to a far greater extent than the more introverted Henderson who, at best, was ambivalent about the commercial aspects of bandleading. In the final analysis, these two jazz pioneers needed each other and together could achieve results that neither, on his own, would reach.