As a young man, Mateen was originally a percussionist, and he started playing flute as a teenager. From there he moved to alto and then tenor saxophone. He started out playing rhythm and blues in the early 1970s which led him to the tenor saxophone chair of the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. He has performed or recorded with Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, William Parker, Alan Silva, Butch and Wilber Morris, Raphe Malik, Steve Swell, Roy Campbell, Jr., Matthew Shipp, Marc Edwards, Jemeel Moondoc, William Hooker, Henry Grimes, Rashid Bakr, among others. He also is a member of the band TEST, with Daniel Carter. --------------- Tenor, alto saxophonist, Bb clarinetist, alto clarinetist, flutist, composer, Sabir Mateen, born in Philadelphia, has been a musician most of his life. Starting in the Philadelphia area as a percussionist, he started playing flute as a teenager. Gradually evovling from alto to tenor saxophone, he has been through a number of musical transformations. He started out playing rhythm and blues in the early '70s which led him to the tenor saxophone chair of the Horace Tapscott Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. From there he has or is performing with Cecil Taylor, Sunny Murray, William Parker, Alan Silva, Butch &Wilber Morris, Raphe Malik, Steve Swell, Mark Whitecage, Roy Campbell, Matthew Shipp, Marc Edwards, Jemeel Moondoc, William Hooker, Henry Grimes, Rashid Bakr, Kali Fasteau and numerous others. He also is a member of the cooperative band TEST. Sabir also performs with, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, William Parker's Inside The Music Of Curtis Mayfield, Earth People, the Downtown Horns and The East 3rd Street Ensemble. He is the leader of "The Sabir Mateen Quintet", Shapes Textures & Sound Ensemble, The Omni-Sound, and other bands Source: http://www.sabirmateen.com/ --------------- Biography by Steve Huey, All Music Guide --------------- A Fireside Chat With Sabir Mateen By Fred Jung "Average New Yorkers seemed to enjoy it. We had babies dancing and even teenagers doing breakdancing and some people want to come up and rap while we're playing and we even had modern dancers dancing in the subway for us." In the year I was living in New York, there was one band I wanted to catch. The foursome is no run of the mill quartet that plays a couple of sets at the Vanguard (although I am certain they would blow the roof off the place). In the underground, TEST (Daniel Carter, Tom Bruno, Mat Heyner, and Sabir Mateen) was lauded for their guerilla warfare like, impromptu concerts in subway stations. Alas, I am an unlucky soul and never saw them live (a shame since they don't play the left coast either). So records (Eremite and AUM Fidelity) are my only source, and although good, they could never do these cats justice. Mateen has been in my sights since I first heard him on an obscure record, Flight 17 with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, lead by legendary Los Angeles folk hero, Horace Tapscott. Although the piss ant record label spells Mateen's name incorrectly (Sabia Matteen), it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it was Mateen's tenor raging throughout the live date. Since, one label in particular has audibly cornered the market on Mateen sessions and Eremite's catalog includes, a burner with Mateen Source: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/iviews/smateen2002.htm
Sabir Mateen is a musician and composer from Philadelphia who plays primarily in the avant-garde jazz idiom. He plays tenor and alto saxophone, B♭ and alto clarinet, and flute.
Famed for his performances in the New York City subway system with the free jazz quartet Test, Sabir Mateen plays a passionate yet nuanced tenor as his main ax, but is equally comfortable on alto sax, clarinet, and flute. Mateen is capable of raw, all-out explosion, but frequently displays a wide dynamic range and a subtler side, and sometimes leans toward melodic free-bop. A native of Philadelphia, Mateen made his first recordings on the West Coast with pianist Horace Tapscott's Pan African People's Arkestra in 1980, and also played with Sun Ra, though he never officially joined Ra's band. In 1989, Mateen relocated to New York with prompting from the legendary drummer Sunny Murray, and spent the next few years paying his dues on the avant-garde scene.
In 1995, he recorded the duo album Getting Away With Murder with drummer Tom Bruno; a live performance in New York's Grand Central Station, it was released on Eremite. Mateen's recording activity steadily increased over the next few years. He joined Bruno's quartet Test, which also featured bassist Matt Heyner and saxophonist Daniel Carter, and was noted for its impromptu guerrilla concerts in New York subway stations. Mateen's other notable side engagements included work with the Raphe Malik Quartet and the One World Ensemble, and he also formed the trio Tenor Rising, Drums Expanding with Daniel Carter and drummer David Nuss, which began recording for Sound @ One in 1997. Also that year, Mateen led his own trio (with bassist John Voigt and drummer Lawrence Cook) on a session for Eremite, the well-received Divine Mad Love. The following year, he teamed with Sunny Murray for We Are Not at the Opera, a duo album on Eremite; additionally, a spate of Test recordings appeared over 1998-1999. Late 2000 brought more recordings in a duo format: Brothers Together, with the brilliant Hamid Drake on Eremite, and Sun Xing, with Ben Karetnick on JMZ. In early 2001, Mateen led a quintet also featuring Raphe Malik on the Bleu Regard release Secrets of When. 
and Hamid Drake (Brothers Together), Mateen with Sunny Murray (We Are Not At The Opera), Mateen's own trio (Divine Mad Love), Mateen with TESTmate Bruno (Getting Away with Murder), Mateen with Raphe Malik (ConSequences), a date with Alan Silva's Sound Visions Orchestra, and the before mentioned TEST record. Not nearly enough documentation for a voice that ought to be heard. The man's got heart, something terribly lacking from music these days. Mateen sat down with the Roadshow to talk about his time with Tapscott, TEST, and his records, as always unedited and in his own words.
FRED JUNG: Let's start from the beginning.
SABIR MATEEN: I always liked music since I was young when I was singing in choirs and stuff like that. It always made me want to get into it. Just from that and I had a cousin who played saxophone and a guy who lived next door to me who played saxophone all the time. When I was little, I used to listen to him through the walls and everything and just listen to him play and practice all the time. That really made me just want to play music and in general, saxophone, even though it took me a while to get to there. Generally, always had a natural feeling liking to do music and that's what I've been doing most of my life. It is just difficult to say, but that is basically what made me get into it. I just heard it and it was the thing that made me feel good all the time. My mother, basically, had most of the singers like Dinah Washington and she used to like Billie Holiday and they liked males singer like Johnny Mathis and Roy Hamilton. So mostly, I was listening to a lot of singers. Then when I was coming along in my teens years, I was listening to a lot of rhythm and blues singers and they really turned me onto rhythm and blues musicians because at that age of growing up in the Sixties, you grew up exposed to a lot of that. It was all around you and everything. You had to be, well, you didn't have to be, but naturally, you became a part of that environment. That's what basically influenced you for me, from seeing all that. I grew up in that type of environment. Of course, I remember my mother singing church songs and everything, so that kind of stuck with me also.
FJ: How did your stint with Horace Tapscott come about?
SM: Well, what happened was, I was in the Air Force and all my tour of duty was on the West Coast, except for about a year when I went to Asia. So basically, when I got out, I was stationed in San Bernardino, so I just stayed there. I lived in San Bernardino for a while and then I moved to LA, which was in the mid-Seventies. I moved over there and I was playing in several bands, almost everywhere I was going. I was playing in a couple of, well, I enrolled in college in LA too, so I was playing in the college band, jazz band, symphony band, and woodwind ensembles and percussion ensembles. So basically, I lived in LA because I just stayed there through the military and so I stayed out there and I eventually moved to LA. That is basically how I really ended up on the West Coast. I didn't really want to come back to Philly right away. I wanted to live somewhere different from where I was raised and so I ended up in LA at that point.
FJ: Horace spent time in the Air Force as well.
SM: I found out later, yeah.
FJ: He wasn't too fond of it.
SM: Neither did I (laughing). Yeah, yeah, a lot of my friends, musicians, who were in the military, they were in the band. For some reason, I didn't want to do it. I wasn't in the band. I was basically doing supply work and stuff like that. I was in a couple of bands on the side. I was in an army band and I was in a jazz band playing mostly standards and mostly funk based R&B tunes. Mostly, I was playing percussion. That's the instrument I started on and later on, I picked up the alto. I was basically playing a lot of alto then and I switched to tenor while I was in the Air Force. I started playing tenor and I stuck with tenor quite a long time and I didn't pick up the alto again until the Eighties. So I was playing a lot of tenor in those bands. Basically, that's what I was doing. I stationed mostly in Northern California, near San Rafael and I was in Okinawa and Thailand. I spent time in the Philippines. I was playing in a lot of bands there, mostly R&B. I was just really learning jazz at that moment, but I was listening to jazz. I was listening to jazz since I was a teenager, or probably since I was a kid because my next door neighbor played jazz and my cousin did. But I was listening to jazz since I was a teenager, so it was a matter of me just playing it, which actually came natural, came very natural to me. Most of my time in the Air Force, I was playing some kind of music in some form or another, even though I was doing this supply work, which was actually like a day job. That is basically what I was doing there. I spent three years and three months there and then I got out, an early out in 1974. I went in '71. At that time, I was playing music from a natural point of view. My interest wasn't towards reading music and all that, so I wasn't interested in it at that time, even though a little later, I became interested in it as I got out. I felt myself limited, so I felt I had to do some other things musically.
FJ: What prompted your departure?
SM: Well, what happened was, well, I wanted to go back because I really got tired of the West Coast. Main reason why I stayed out there for so long was because I was playing with Horace and I met some really good friends who are good friends for life and I just stayed out there and it just got to that time where musically, I felt I had to do something else so I was with some guys, a couple of people and the experience was mixed, good and not so good, and at that same time, unfortunately, my mother passed and so they wanted me to come back to Philly and I really didn't want to go right away, but when she passed, I decided to go and I decided to stay there. I didn't really want to come back to LA. I wasn't playing too much with the Arkestra then, Fred. There wasn't too much to keep me there and I decided I needed to stay in Philly and see what was happening there. I was really excited about being back home and playing music because I didn't really do that so much in Philly. I really wanted to really play a lot in Philly and really just go meet a lot of people and I knew Trane spent most of his musical education and life in Philly before he moved to New York and I really wanted to see what that was about and see if I could meet some of the people who he came up with musically, which I did. That was a blessing and a good experience for me.
FJ: You didn't have the fairytale welcome when you moved to New York.
SM: Well, first of all, when I came to the city, I had nowhere to live, so basically, my first night in New York, I slept on the ground, right by the Port Authority. Then I eased my way and I was sleeping in, I was basically homeless for a long time. It was difficult to find work because when I came to New York, I was in my, maybe, close to late thirties, so it was difficult to find work here and there. I came to New York, I worked with a world music, reggae band. I was doing things here and there. But I was playing on the street, which I started in LA. I played the street for eight years in Philly, so I had that going and basically my survival was playing on the street. 
Before I actually started working steadily, basically, I didn't really start working steady until maybe 1993 or '94. I did my first performance in New York, I had been here three weeks and I did a performance with a musician named Khusenaton and then I did a performance with my own band a year later in 1990. That was pretty good. Then they were sporadically coming, but most of my performance, like I said, were on the street until '94, then things started to come along for me. That was good. Then I was working with, well, in 1990, I started working with TEST, so that was starting to happen in '91. In '91, I was starting to work with TEST.
FJ: TEST is known for its guerilla, impromptu subway performances.
SM: Right, well, I've been playing in the street close to ten years before I started playing with TEST in the subway. I also did a thing with Tom, Tom Bruno, before TEST came about. We didn't see each other for a while and then him and Daniel were doing things. They had been playing individually in the subway for a long time. They were doing something and then they invited me to do something and it just happened that way. We were basically a trio for at least three and a half years. In and out we had different bass players, but for the most part, we were a trio for three and a half years. It just became natural because we were doing these things daily now. I don't go out as much now, but it was just something we did in getting our sound together to a group sound. Some people might say it was a performance/paid rehearsal or whatever. It was rough at the beginning. It was more rough when you play by yourself, but when you have a group of people with you, it turns into something different, a sense of continuity and communication. You can communicate with each other and like you said, Fred, an impromptu performance.
FJ: And the band is still together.
SM: Oh, yeah. We have a couple of performances coming up. I'll tell you the most concrete one, which I just got today, which is on December 22, which is at CBGB's gallery. We're opening up for Greg Osby's trio.
FJ: Oz. I applaud that.
SM: Yeah, I couldn't believe that of all people. Hey, I look at that as an opportunity, not just for a lot of people to see us, but it is the same music. He just has his way of expressing it and we have ours. It should be an interesting evening. I'm trying to get some things for us at the Knitting Factory.
FJ: What stops did TEST play at?
SM: Well, we have been playing at one for at least ten years because the group's been together ten and a half years, going on our eleventh year now. We've been playing at Astor Place for the last, and Times Square Station, we've been playing at those two stations for the last ten years at least.
FJ: I think I caught a mime once at Times Square Station.
SM: Yeah, sometimes you do. Average New Yorkers seemed to enjoy it. We had babies dancing and even teenagers doing breakdancing and some people want to come up and rap while we're playing and we even had modern dancers dancing in the subway for us. One time, this really tickled me, because one time, a girl came three times to dance with us and she actually got a gig while dancing with us (laughing) at Penn Station. She was always doing that and somebody actually hired her. They didn't hire us, but they hired her.
FJ: Your first album as a leader was Divine Mad Love.
SM: Right, I did Divine Mad Love with my trio, my trio that was (laughing) because now I have a quintet. But that was my trio from before. I have Raphe Malik on trumpet. I have Naoko Ono on piano, I don't think her name is so familiar, but it will be. She plays a lot with Billy Bang. Jane Wang (Hao Records), she's a bass player. She's from Boston and she's a very good bass player and a very good cellist too. And Ravish Monin and drums and percussion and his name is starting to be heard a little in New York and he is also playing with Kalaparush. We have a current CD out (Secrets of When) on the Bleu Regard label. That's been getting some play and it is starting to now because the label has new distributors. That's been happening. My latest CD is the one with Hamid of course.
FJ: Brothers Together. You are no stranger to duos with percussions having done records with Tom Bruno and Sunny Murray.
SM: Yeah, the thing is to try and keep it very productive and interesting. When I play a duet with the drums, I am actually visualizing the drums like I am playing with a quintet or a whole band instead of just the drums. I listen to hear melodically, besides rhythmically where the drums are going. That's one of the things I liked about Hamid, was all the different directions that he goes in, which is not saying that Tom Bruno or Sunny Murray didn't because they definitely did too (laughing). In fact, the duet with Sunny was pretty funky. Hamid was a really, really good experience because it was only the second time we played together. The first time was the day before the recording (laughing). It was really a natural hook up and it was something that we wanted to do a long time. It was actually his suggestion. Actually, both of the duos with him and Sunny Murray, were both their suggestions. That was really, really good. I have one with a young drummer, Ben Karetnick (Sun Xing) that was pretty good too. Getting Away with Murder, we were just playing in Grand Central and Alen Stefanov, the engineer was just recording us and we weren't even thinking about putting that on a CD or record or anything. It just happened that Michael Ehlers, my producer came over to the engineer's house, Alen's house and Alen played it and said that he should hear it and he heard it and liked it so much that
he wanted to record it. He wanted to buy the DAT and record it. That is how that happened. But getting back to Hamid, he is just one of the greatest drummers that I've ever played with. What he does, I've never seen any drummer do. He takes the simplest things and he really does create really total music, melodic, rhythmically, and spiritually because he is very spiritual. It really, really influenced me musically where I can just play and be totally free to do anything I want and don't have to worry about anything. That session really made me feel. I really felt good about that and the live performance we did the day before. Hopefully, we will be doing something since that CD is out.
FJ: Critics peg you with the "free jazz" letter A, when more often than not, your music is accessible, on occasion bridging chamber music.
SM: Sometimes it gets there. A lot of them (band members) studied the music of their culture because Ravish was born in Bombay and he studied Indian music since he was three years old and Naoko, she studied impressionistic music, classical, blues, gospel, and also, she had plays a lot of Japanese music from her culture. And Jane, she used to be a classical musician and she brings that to what she does and she knows a lot of Chinese music and of course, Raphe, anyone who knows his music knows the history of Raphe. He can play all kinds of music. He can play music with changes and everything. That is one of the good things about us on the front line together because we came through playing music with changes and that's where I learned my music and him too. We learned playing standard tunes and when I started playing with Horace, that is where I really learned that I had to do more than play avant-garde, so called avant-garde. I realized that if I really wanted to be free, I had to learn where I was coming from and so I had to learn the blues and everything. To be free, I feel you have to know the whole history of the music. You have to know what is before you before you go ahead. You don't necessarily have to know how to play the tunes from these eras, but I think you have to really learn the language. I think that is what is important. That is what it means to be free.
FJ: With alto, tenor, flute, and clarinet in your bag, any emphasis on one above another?
SM: No, because I've tried that and for right now, it doesn't work because instruments sometimes are like humans, some kind of weird thing.
FJ: You don't want to ignore one, it might get pissed.
SM: They do (laughing). It feels like they do, especially if you have been playing one longer than another. Even though I started on alto, I've been playing tenor longer because this whole period of time where I had nothing but a tenor. In fact, I came to New York with a tenor and a change of clothes. Also, clarinet, I've been playing clarinet for a long time. I was playing clarinet on the side. I think I did two things with Horace playing clarinet. They weren't recorded. They were live performances. I did a couple of live performances with Horace. One I did exclusively on clarinet because I didn't have a tenor. Also, I played flute. Flute was the first wind instrument I played. I've been playing flute for quite a long time. I don't have a piccolo or anything like that. The alto clarinet, when I first got that, my clarinet started acting up (laughing). Alto clarinet is the newest and I've been playing that the least. I've just been playing that in the last four years, four, five years. It was given to me. It's a very interesting sound. I really would like to give that a big push because there is not many people playing alto clarinet, not that I know of. The main guy that influences me on it a lot, I have to play with him in the Visions Orchestra, is J.D. Parran. I love his sound on alto clarinet. That's an instrument that doesn't get played much. In fact, on Brothers Together and Secrets of When, many of the writers are calling it bass clarinet. Even though it was written clearly on the quintet CD, but on the Eremite CD, Michael just put clarinet. I try to tell people to distinguish the clarinet so people will know that people are playing that alto clarinet.
FJ: Have you returned to the West Coast?
SM: The band has never been out to the West Coast. In fact, Fred, I haven't been to the West Coast since I left LA, which is twenty one years ago. I look forward to come out there, but it just hasn't come my way yet, either with TEST, the quintet. I have another group called Juxtaposition and we're playing the Knitting Factory on the 26 with a young cello player that you've probably heard about through the John Zorn camp or Anthony Coleman or some of these other people. Her name is Okkyung Lee. She's a cello player. Matthew Heyner form TEST, he's on bass and Ravish again is on drums.
FJ: She's Korean.
SM: Right. She's very good. She is very good and people will be hearing more from her. She plays with Butch Morris a lot too. But she is a very interesting player and we're definitely doing something on the 26. I am putting some more energy into that group because that is a very interesting group.
FJ: And studio time?
SM: That's a good question, Fred (laughing). I'd love to someday. Someday, I would love to. I don't know when, but it would be good to do such a thing. It doesn't matter, TEST, the quintet, Juxtaposition, or I have a group with Roy Campbell. Roy Campbell put it together with me, Roy Campbell, and Daniel Carter called the Downtown Horns. It came about because we were doing a lot of things for a lot of people, the three of us. Roy said, "Let's just the three of us do something." We just played this Friday. 
FJ: Having come this far and knowing where you once were, do you take anything for granted?
SM: No, because once you do that, you're finished. It is just like playing. You can't take your playing for granted. It's like playing a solo. You can't plot your solo. If you play things you know, which there are a lot of musicians that do now. I don't want to get into that bag, but it is not interesting. It is the element of surprise and spontaneity, that's what made all the masters great. One is because they didn't take anything for granted. They took nothing for granted. They just wanted to play their music and they kept their music fresh by playing the things that came spontaneously to them. As Miles Davis put it, "The things that you don't know." He said, "Now that you've played what you know. Play me what you don't know. That's what I want to hear."
FJ: The longer I have lived, the more I have come to realize that people don't know shit, so there is plenty of music to be heard.
SM: Yeah, that is the thing. That is not to say, don't know your instrument, because in order to play the things you don't know, you have to play your instrument (laughing).
FJ: The force is strong in you.
SM: Well, I have to keep it going because I am trying to express myself and try to take from what the masters did and try to expand it, instead of playing what they did because that is what made them masters and the people before them. You just have to do it. I am just going to keep trying and as long as I can get musicians because the joy I get is playing with other musicians that can really push me out there. That is what makes a person play is a good band and other people. It is not just the person. It is the people in the band. What makes me have my music and make my music sound great, or good because I'm going to let the people decide on that, but what makes me feel good is to have people who love what I do and appreciate my music and appreciate what I do and love to play with me and help me create my music and push me to levels I have never been before.
Monday, March 2, 2009
SABIR MATEEN
Friday, February 20, 2009
SIDNEY BECHET
Bechet was the very epitome of Jazz…
Everything he played in his whole life was completely original.
I honestly think he was the most unique man ever to be in this music.
……Duke Ellington
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Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.
Bechet's mercurial temperament hampered his career, however, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim.
Biography
Bechet was born in New Orleans. From a young age, Bechet quickly mastered any musical instrument he encountered. Some New Orleanians remembered him as a cornet hot-shot in his youth. At first he decided on the clarinet as his main instrument and Bechet remained one of jazz's greatest clarinetists for decades. The clarinetist Jimmie Noone, who became famous in his own right, took lessons from Bechet when the latter was only thirteen-years old. Despite his prowess on clarinet, Bechet became best remembered as the first great master of the soprano saxophone.
Bechet had experience playing in traveling shows even before he left New Orleans at the age of twenty. Never long content in one place, he alternated using Chicago, New York, and Europe as his base of operations. Bechet was jailed [2] in Paris, France when a female [3] passerby was wounded during a pistol duel (which Bechet had instigated in an argument over chord changes); after serving jail time, Bechet was deported.
He continued recording and touring, although his success was intermittent.
Bechet relocated to France in 1950. He married Elisabeth Ziegler in Antibes, France in 1951. Existentialists in France called him "le dieu".
Shortly before his death in Paris, Bechet dictated his poetic autobiography, Treat It Gentle. He died from lung cancer on his sixty-second birthday.
Career highlights
Bechet successfully composed in jazz, pop-tune, and extended concert work forms. He never learned to read music, he developed his own fingering system, and he never played section parts in a big band or swing-style combo. His recordings often have been reissued.
Some of the highlights of his career include 1923 sides with Louis Armstrong in "Clarence Williams Blue Five"; the 1932, 1940, 1941 "New Orleans Feetwarmers" sides; a 1938 "Tommy Ladnier Orchestra" session ("Weary Blues", "Really the Blues"); a hit 1938 recording of "Summertime"; and various versions of his own composition, "Petite Fleur".
On April 18, 1941, as an early experiment in overdubbing at RCA Studios on 24th street in New York City, Bechet recorded a version of the pop song "Sheik of Araby", playing six different instruments: clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass, and drums. A theretofore unissued master of this recording was included in the 1965 LP Bechet of New Orleans, issued by RCA Victor as LPV-510. On the liner notes, George Hoeffer quotes Sidney as follows: "I started by playing The Sheik on piano, and played the drums while listening to the piano. I meant to play all the rhythm instruments, but got all mixed up and grabbed my soprano, then the bass, then the tenor saxophone, and finally finished up with the clarinet."
In 1944, 1946, and 1953 he recorded and performed in concert with Chicago Jazz Pianist and Vibraphonist Max Miller, private recordings which are part of the Max Miller archive and have never been released. These concerts and recordings are covered completely in John Chilton's great book on Bechet.
Bechet was an important influence on alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who studied with Bechet as a teenager.
In 1968, Bechet was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
The New York Times music writer Robert Palmer wrote of Bechet that, "by combining the 'cry' of the blues players and the finesse of the Creoles into his 'own way,' Sidney Bechet created a style which moved the emotions even as it dazzled the mind."[5]
Tributes
Renowned blues harmonica player Sugar Blue claims to have taken his name from the Bechet recording "Sugar Blues".
Philip Larkin wrote an ode to Bechet in The Whitsun Weddings.
Bechet is said to have served as a prototype for the saxophonist "Pablo" in the novel Steppenwolf, since it was almost certainly through listening to his playing in Europe in the 1920s that Hermann Hesse became acquainted with the world of jazz music.
Bechet to me was the very epitome of jazz... everything he played in his whole life was completely original. I honestly think he was the most unique man to ever be in this music. — Duke Ellington
In the 1997 documentary Wild Man Blues, filmmaker and clarinet aficionado Woody Allen repeatedly refers to Sidney Bechet. One of his adopted children with Soon-Yi Previn also is named Bechet.
Bechet, portrayed by Jeffrey Wright appeared as a character in two episodes of the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Bechet performs at an underground Paris jazz club in the novel Replay by Ken Grimwood. This appearance is slightly anachronistic, as the scene takes place in 1963 even though Bechet died in 1959.
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Biography by Scott Yanow
Sidney Bechet was the first important jazz soloist on records in history (beating Louis Armstrong by a few months). A brilliant soprano saxophonist and clarinetist with a wide vibrato that listeners either loved or hated, Bechet's style did not evolve much through the years but he never lost his enthusiasm or creativity. A master at both individual and collective improvisation within the genre of New Orleans jazz, Bechet was such a dominant player that trumpeters found it very difficult to play with him. Bechet wanted to play lead and it was up to the other horns to stay out of his way.
Sidney Bechet studied clarinet in New Orleans with Lorenzo Tio, Big Eye Louis Nelson, and George Baquet and he developed so quickly that as a child he was playing with some of the top bands in the city. He even taught clarinet, and one of his students (Jimmie Noone) was actually two years older than him. In 1917, he traveled to Chicago, and in 1919 he joined Will Marion Cook's orchestra, touring Europe with Cook and receiving a remarkably perceptive review from Ernst Ansermet. While overseas he found a soprano sax in a store and from then on it was his main instrument. Back in the U.S., Bechet made his recording debut in 1923 with Clarence Williams and during the next two years he appeared on records backing blues singers, interacting with Louis Armstrong and playing some stunning solos. He was with Duke Ellington's early orchestra for a period and at one point hired a young Johnny Hodges for his own band. However, from 1925-1929 Bechet was overseas, traveling as far as Russia but getting in trouble (and spending jail time) in France before being deported.
Most of the 1930s were comparatively lean times for Bechet. He worked with Noble Sissle on and off and had a brilliant session with his New Orleans Feetwarmers in 1932 (featuring trumpeter Tommy Ladnier). But he also ran a tailor's shop which was more notable for its jam sessions than for any money it might make. However, in 1938 he had a hit recording of "Summertime," Hugues Panassie featured Bechet on some records and soon he was signed to Bluebird where he recorded quite a few classics during the next three years. Bechet worked regularly in New York, appeared on some of Eddie Condon's Town Hall concerts, and in 1945 he tried unsuccessfully to have a band with the veteran trumpeter Bunk Johnson (whose constant drinking killed the project). Jobs began to dry up about this time, and Bechet opened up what he hoped would be a music school. He only had one main pupil, but Bob Wilber became his protégé.
Sidney Bechet's fortunes changed drastically in 1949. He was invited to the Salle Pleyel Jazz Festival in Paris, caused a sensation, and decided to move permanently overseas. Within a couple years he was a major celebrity and a national hero in France, even though the general public in the U.S. never did know who he was. Bechet's last decade was filled with exciting concerts, many recordings, and infrequent visits back to the U.S. before his death from cancer. His colorful (if sometimes fanciful) memoirs Treat It Gentle and John Chilton's magnificent Bechet biography The Wizard of Jazz (which traces his life nearly week-by-week) are both highly recommended. Many of Sidney Bechet's recordings are currently available on CD.
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Who was Sidney Bechet?
Sidney Bechet: The Almost-Forgotten Jazz Immortal
Who was the New Orleans jazz pioneer who did most to make this music a unique art form? When this question is asked, the name of Louis Armstrong invariably comes to mind, and rightly so.
But there is another jazz musician whose name deserves to be coupled with Armstrong as the greatest of the New Orleans Jazz players. His name is Sidney Bechet.
Bechet was born in New Orleans in May 1897, just three years before his compatriot, Louis Armstrong. Although the two boys grew up in the same city, their home environments were worlds apart.
Armstrong grew up in dire poverty, living alternately with his mother and a succession of "stepfathers" and his grandmother, and spending time in a reform school.
Sidney Bechet, who was of Creole ancestry, grew up in a middle class environment. His father, Omar, who was a shoemaker, played the flute as a hobby. Indeed, music had an important role in the Bechet household, as Sidney's four brothers also played instruments.
His brother, Leonard, played the clarinet and trombone, and it was to the former instrument that eight-year-old Sidney was attracted. Leonard, whose main interest was the trombone, passed along his clarinet to his younger brother.
At first, Sidney played in the family musicales - waltzes, quadrilles, the polite music of the middle class. But as he grew into adolescence, Sidney was attracted to the syncopated music played in the dance halls and brothels in the Storyville District of New Orleans.
As a boy, he would watch the street parades in which jazz bands played. Young Sidney was so attracted to the music, that he often played hooky from school. And as he became more proficient on the clarinet, Sidney played in local jazz bands, such as the Young Olympians. His playing so impressed Bunk Johnson, the legendary cornet player, that Sidney was invited to join Johnson's band, the Eagle Band. Sidney gained much experience, playing in dance halls, and for picnics, and parties.
Bechet left New Orleans for the first time when he was 19, traveling to Chicago with pianist, Clarence Williams and his variety show. Bechet's big break came in 1919 when the composer-conductor Will Marion Cook asked him to join his Southern Syncopated Orchestra for an engagement in London.
Here Bechet came to the attention of the noted Swiss Conductor, Ernst Ansermet, who conducted the music of Stravinsky for the Ballets Russa. Ansermet wrote in a Swiss musical Journal, "The extraordinary clarinet virtuoso Bechet is an artist of genius!"
Sidney Bechet eventually became even better known as a virtuoso of the soprano saxophone. He first tried to play on a beat-up old soprano sax he purchased in a pawn shop. Such was the difficulty of the soprano sax, an instrument extremely difficult to play in tune, that Bechet gave up and obtained his money back from the pawnbroker.
A year latter in London, Bechet purchased a brand new instrument and tried again. This time he was successful and succeeded in making the soprano saxophone an important voice in jazz.
Bechet played both the clarinet and soprano saxophone with a broad vibrato, a characteristic that gave passion and intensity to his playing.
Much of Sidney Bechet's subsequent career was spent abroad. In 1925 he played in Claude Hopkin's band, which was accompanying a revue starring Josephine Baker. Bechet also played in bands led by Noble Sissle in London and Paris, and later, in the United States. Some of the numbers performed and recorded by Bechet with Nobel Sissle are Loveless Love, Polka Dot Rag, and Dear Old Southland.
In 1932, Bechet and his friend, trumpet player Tommy Ladnier, formed their own band, the New Orleans Feetwarmers. When engagements for the Feetwarmers became scarce, Ladnier and Bechet opened a dry cleaning shop in Harlem. Bechet became quite adept at pressing and altering clothes.
Sidney Bechet's association with Brooklyn began in 1945 when he moved into a house at 160 Quincy Street. To augment the unstable income of a jazz musician, Bechet began teaching music. The adolescent that became his star pupil and disciple was Bob Wilber, then still in high school. Bechet taught Wilber the rudiments of both the clarinet and soprano saxophone. When he finished high school, Wilber moved into the Quincy Street house with Bechet so that he could have longer and more frequent lessons. Today, Bob Wilber is a leading exponent of the soprano sax and clarinet, and with his own group, the Bechet Legacy, he plays in the Bechet tradition.
Much of the latter part of his life, Bechet spent in France. Many of his compositions are inspired by his love for that country. They include Petite Fleur, Rue des Champs Elysees, and Si tous vois ma mere. Other Bechet compositions include Chant in the Night, Blues in the Air, Bechet's Fantasy, and his ode to his Brooklyn home, Quincy Street Stomp.
Sidney Bechet died in Paris, May 14, 1959. In July 1997, The Sidney Bechet Society has been formed to perpetuate the name and fame of Sidney Bechet. To that end, the Sidney Bechet Society sponsors concerts, symposia, in-depth studies, a newsletter, change the name of Quincy Street to Bechet Street and a Website to carry the appreciation of this great jazz pioneer into the next century.
Source: http://www.sidneybechet.org/
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Sidney Bechet was a child prodigy in New Orleans. He was such good clarinet player that, in his youth he was featured by some of the top bands in the city. Bechet's style of playing clarinet and soprano sax dominated many of the bands that he was in. He played lead parts that were usually reserved for trumpets and was a master of improvisation. In 1917 he moved to Chicago. In 1919 he was playing with Will Marion Cook's Syncopated Orchestra and with Louis Mitchell's Jazz Kings in Europe. While overseas he bought a soprano sax and from then on it was his main instrument. Back in the U.S. Bechet made his recording debut in 1923 with Clarence Williams and during the next two years he appeared on several of Williams' records backing up blues singers and on a classic session with the Clarence Williams Blue Five, featuring Louis Armstrong whom he knew as a child in New Orleans. He played in an early version of Duke Ellington's Washingtonians but unfortunately never recorded with them. From 1925 to 1929 Bechet lived and played in Europe, playing in England, France, Germany and Russia. While living in Paris, Bechet got into a dispute with another musician and a gun fight broke out. Three people were wounded and Sidney spent a year in a French jail as a result of the fracas. He was deported upon release from prison and went to Berlin, Germany. He could not stay in France and he would not get a visa for England so he stayed in Berlin till 1931 then joined the Noble Sissle Orchestra and returned to America. Bechet managed to keep playing during the Thirties, but he also ran an unsuccessful tailor's shop with Tommy Ladnier and made some memorable recordings with the trumpeter under the name of the New Orleans Feetwarmers. In 1938 he had a hit record of "Summertime". In the Forties Bechet worked regularly in New York with Eddie Condon and tried to start a band with Bunk Johnson. Bechet was a popular figure of the Dixieland revival of the late Forties often recording with Mezz Mezzrow. Bechet returned to France in 1952 and was warmly received there. While in France he recorded hit records that rivaled the sales of pop stars. Bechet was one of the great soloists of early Jazz. He lived a very rich life, always managing to "make the scene" where it was "happening", whether it be in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Berlin or Paris.
Here's a special bonus recording courtesy of Verne Buland
This is a strange record. The Sheik Of Araby is an early example of multi-track recording. Sidney Bechet was at the RCA studios on April 18th, 1941 (before tape) and the engineers fiddled with some early multiple recordings. This is the result. Record an instrument, play the record back while he played another instrument along with the record, ad nauseum - the first ones recorded sounding worse each time another record is made. Clarinet, soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums, all played by Bechet. If you can hear the drums, you win a cigar.
Source: http://www.redhotjazz.com/bechet.html
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Sidney Bechet was a proponent of Dixieland Jazz who played the clarinet and was the first person to play Jazz on a Soprano Saxophone. Domineering is a word often used to describe his music. His various fights showed he had a short temper that shows in his music. His solo’s were often soaring and passionate, endlessly inventive, direct rather than ornate, and quite unmistakable. Early recordings show him as Louis Armstrong’s equal and, as he commands the ensemble with his burnished sound, his timing seems more in keeping with a trumpet lead than with the contrapuntal line usually adopted by saxophones and clarinets. Throughout his life, he never had the discipline needed to play in a regular band, he always preferred to be a soloist and worked in many different bands.
1897 Sidney Bechet was born on May 14, in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a "Creole" family. His father ran a shoe shop. All of Bechet’s brothers were keen musicians, but Sidney was the most talented.
1903 Without telling his family, he practiced secretly on his brother Leonard’s clarinet. During a family party he played along side Freddie Keppard. His playing was heard by George Baquet who was amazed by his promise and decided there and then to give him free lessons.
1908 At the age of just 11, he was hired by Bunk Johnson’s Eagle Band.
1910 His mother gave him permission to play in the Storyville clubs, provided that Bunk Johnson, who acted as a kind of guardian, brought him home each night.
1913 He started playing with King Oliver
1915 He made a tour of Texas in a band led by Clarence Williams.
1917 From clubs in Perdido Street in New Orleans he moved to Chicago, first with King Oliver and then Freddie Keppard. Later he left Keppard to play in other bands.
1919 With a band of Will Marion Cook he achieved great personal success in England, earning the admiration, among others, of the conductor Ernest Ansermet. When the band broke up he decided to stay in London with some other members of the band. He stayed there until, following a somewhat immoral adventure, he was hauled before the magistrates and expelled from the country. In addition to his love of traveling, Bechet was also well known for his love of the opposite sex, a fact that often got him into serious trouble.
Also while in London he brought a Soprano Saxophone, a more domineering instrument than the clarinet.
1921 He returned to the United States and got a job with the musical show "How Come?", in which the unknown Bessie Smith made her debut.
1923 He made his first recording with Clarence Williams in the Blue Five and also recorded with Louis Armstrong.
During this period he started to prefer the Soprano Saxophone to the Clarinet.
1924-25 In these years he worked with Mamie Smith, James P. Johnson and Duke Ellington’s Washingtonians. He also found time to manage a night club in Harlem the "Club Basha", but soon gotten tired of that. He also made his debut in Paris in a band led by Claude Hopkins, taking part in a show featuring Josephine Baker. When the show finally ended, in Berlin, Bechet once more indulged his love of traveling by taking part in a tour with Benny Peyton. He ended up in Russia and in Moscow he met Tommy Ladnier, who was also on tour. After this he toured all over Europe before finally going back to Harlem.
1929 He returned to Paris where after an episode of violence in which 3 people were wounded he was sentenced to 11 months in jail and expelled from France.
1928-31 Bechet continued to move back and forth between Europe and the United States. He went to Berlin and (clandestinely) to Paris with Noble Sissle’s band, then to New York and then back to Berlin. He also made a brief appearance with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, just enough to influence the style of Johnny Hodges.
1932 He formed "The New Orleans Feetwarmers" with Tommy Ladnier and recorded some real "gems".
1933 At the end of the year he suddenly decided to give up music to open , in partnership with Tommy Ladnier, a shop for mending and ironing clothes, which they called the "Southern Tailor Shop".
1934 Tired of his business life, Bechet again joined Noble Sissle’s band and made some excellent recordings.
1938 He left Sissle and free-lanced for a while. He took part in the "Panassie Session" with Tommy Ladnier and Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow.
1939 He made a superb recording of "Summertime" with Meade "Lux" Lewis and Teddy Bunn. He also recorded with Jelly Roll Morton.
1940 An extremely important year. He recorded four masterpieces with Louis Armstrong, including "Perdido Street Blues". He also made some excellent recordings with a group known as the "Bechet-Spanier Big Four". He also recorded again with the "New Orleans Feetwarmers", reformed as a studio band. One result was the magnificent "Blues In Thirds" with Bechet on Clarinet and Earl Hines on Piano.
1944-48 During these year’s Bechet used many jazz soloists in his recording sessions: Sidney De Paris, Vic Dickson, Art Hodes, Pops Foster, Max Kaminsky, Albert Nicholas and others. He recorded a series of numbers with Mezz Mezzrow. In 1946 he had an idea of setting up a music school in Brooklyn; his most important pupil was Bob Wilber who recorded with him on several occasions. In 1947 he was a guest on several editions of Rudy Blesh’s radio show "This Is Jazz". In 1948 he played at the Jazz LTD in Chicago.
1949 He took part in the Paris Jazz Festival, organized by Charles Delauney, with triumphant success. The French finally forgot about the sad episode of 1929.
1950-54 Apart from some brief visits to the United States, Bechet lived and worked in Paris; he was literally adored by the French who knew him affectionately as "Le Dieu". His music was praised by Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialists, along with that of Juliette Greco. Bechet played mostly with the traditional bands of Claude Luter and André Reweillotty. In 1952 is song "Petite Fleur" became a world wide hit, and in 1953 his ballet score "La Nuit Est Une Sorciere" premiered in Paris.
1955 Bechet settled in Paris for good.
1957 He recorded an album with Martial Solal, Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke, entitled "When a Soprano meets a Piano".
1959 Sidney Bechet died on his sixty-second birthday, May 14. He had 3 wives over his life and kept a mistress to which he had a son to till he died.
The inhabitants of Jean-Les-Pins erected a monument in his honour.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/5853/sid.html
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Sidney Bechet by Peter Stone
Sidney Joseph Bechet, the American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer, was born on May 14, 1897, in New Orleans, Louisiana. One of the first important jazz soloists, his recordings precede those of Louis Armstrong, three years his junior, with whom he would later play duets. Noted for well-conceived improvisations and a wide vibrato on both clarinet and soprano sax — due in no small part to his love of operatic tenors, especially Enrico Caruso — Bechet, though initially making the clarinet his primary instrument, may well have been the first well-known jazz saxophonist and the first great soprano saxophonist, giving it a prominent place in jazz. Bechet’s compositions include jazz and pop-tune forms, as well as extended concert works.
Unlike Louis Armstrong, who grew up, sometimes with his mother and a series of “stepfathers,” sometimes with his grandmother, and sometimes in reform school, Bechet, of Creole ancestry, grew up in a middle class environment. His father, Omar, was shoemaker and an amateur flutist; his four brothers pursued other musical instruments. His brother Leonard (a dentist) played trombone and clarinet. When eight-year-old Sidney gravitated toward the latter, Leonard made him a present of it.
Even in Sidney’s youth he mastered any instrument he tried; indeed, he had started out on cornet. But, John Chilton tells us in his biography, Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz (London: Macmillan, 1987) that George Baquet, a noted clarinetist, who had coached young Sidney from time to time beginning in 1907, found that Sidney, who had already developed his own fingerings for the instrument, took in everything Baquet had to say about “embouchure, reeds, mouthpieces, and legato and staccato playing, but any talk about reading music ...and studying harmonies seemed to be quite pointless.” Sidney could follow all that without studying chord names or poring over the written score. He remained a non-reader his entire life, depending solely upon his ear.
As part of his research for his book Mr. Jelly Roll, Alan Lomax recorded, in April 1949, first-hand recollections by Sidney’s brother Leonard Bechet, Albert Glenny, Johnny St. Cyr, Alphonse Picou, and Paul Dominguez, Jr., about early New Orleans jazz and Creole music. They recounted that older Creoles had avoided jazz and favored the polite music of their own Down-town dance halls, just as they spoke French or their own patois and attended plays in French in order to maintain their culture. Alphonse Picou was a good clarinetist, Leonard Bechet relates, but he played a cooler “High Society,” not “hot” jazz. Creole society wanted “respectful,...not jazz, [but] nice, music,” so its musicians hesitated to play jazz, the music of “rough, ignorant,... Up-town” New Orleans.
So Sidney and his family performed waltzes, mazurkas, polkas, quadrilles, and schottisches. But the jazz he heard in street bands as a boy and the syncopated music of Up-town dance halls and the brothels of Storyville fascinated him. He played clarinet in the Young Olympians and was so good that Bunk Johnson, the famous cornettist, invited him, sometime between 1911 and 1913, to play in his own Eagle Band, which played dance halls, parties, and picnics, and soon Sidney was featured by some of the top combos in the city. In 1914, he joined Bill Johnson’s New Olympia Band, and played alongside the legendary cornettist Joe “King” Oliver, with whom he later regularly played pool.
Eventually, the Up-town people played so well that they filled the halls, and the Creoles began to mix their music with jazz. According to Leonard, Sidney “learned you had to play real hard when you played for Negroes...and when you played with Negroes.” You had to have “that drive,... like they’re killing themselves.” Liking Bechet’s music, the tough pimps of the community protected him from its dangers, one pimp, in particular, making sure that Sidney dressed well by buying him expensive clothes.
At the age of nineteen, Bechet left New Orleans for Chicago with pianist Clarence Williams. In 1918 he joined Lawrence Duhé’s band, which included Lil Hardin (later to be Louis Armstrong’s wife) as pianist, and “King” Oliver. For Duhé, Sidney was “the featured hot man.” By then he had already played with many traveling shows, but his career was launched in 1919 when conservatory-trained, African-American composer-conductor Will Marion Cook (memorably portrayed in Josef Škvorecký’s novel, Dvořák in Love) asked Sidney to join his Southern Syncopated Orchestra for a performance in London. There, Bechet met the eminent Swiss conductor of the Ballets russes, Ernest Ansermet, famed for his performances of Ravel and Stravinsky.
Bechet’s temper was legend: in September of 1922 he was deported from England, after being arrested for a brawl with some women in a London hotel room. It was not the first (or last) time he was in difficulties because of a battle with or about a woman. In December 1928 in Paris, he had a confrontation over a woman with banjoist Gilbert “Little Mike” McKendrick at Bricktop’s (Ada Smith’s) café. When Bechet later shot at McKendrick, missing and wounding some bystanders, he was arrested and deported from France.
In 1924 Bechet recorded with Louis Armstrong and the “Clarence Williams Blue Five.” In 1925 he joined Claude Hopkins’s band, which accompanied Josephine Baker. In Paris, London, then the United States, he played with Noble Sissle’s group (“Loveless Love,” “ Polka Dot Rag,” and “Dear Old Southland” were some recordings that came of that association). The short-lived New Orleans Feetwarmers, formed by Bechet and his friend, trumpeter Tommy Ladnier, made some recordings in 1932 and had a few dates at New York’s Savoy Ballroom, but when its gigs dried up, the two went into the dry cleaning business. The Southern Tailor Shop had jam sessions in its back room, but it did not last long either. In 1934 Sissle asked Bechet and Ladnier to join his band. Bechet accepted, but Ladnier remained in the tailor shop; when Bechet went back to visit, the shop had disappeared.
Four days after a March 3rd 1940 benefit for the California migrant workers, folksinger Josh White assembled a trio that included bassist Wilson Myers and Sidney Bechet, clarinet, for one of his first recordings for the two-year-old Blue Note label, a recording designed for the white listener for whom jazz was serious, not dance, music. In a 1950 interview with British music critic Dennis Preston, White (who had also started out in his career playing with pianist Clarence Williams) opined that like his own Sidney Bechet’s music overlapped the categories of jazz and folk. In contrast to the then-new genre of bebop (which he disliked), he said, “Bechet’s music — that’s folk. Like my own music, it isn’t confined to any one thing. There’s a lot that sounds like Hungarian gypsy in Sidney’s playing” (quoted in Elijah Wald’s Society Blues, page 174.)
In the Josh White’s hit “Careless Love,” recorded as part of the 78 album, Harlem Blues, Bechet’s accompanying clarinet is quite discreet behind the vocal, but comes to the fore in when it solos. “Milk Cow Blues” from that same album starts out with Bechet on the soprano sax, but switches to clarinet to fit better with White’s tunings and against Myers’s bowed bass.
Bechet was one of the first jazz musicians to be appreciated by classical audiences and critics and to be rated on a par with Louis Armstrong by the New Orleans jazz aficionados, not to mention by Duke Ellington (whose lead alto sax player, Johnny Hodges, had, in his teens, studied with Bechet). Ellington said that Bechet was “the very epitome of jazz.... [E]verything he played in his whole life was completely original. I honestly think he was the most unique man ever to be in this music.”
Bechet appeared on several radio shows associated with Alan Lomax, such as the one with Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie, Hally Wood, Pops Foster, and Cisco Houston and the Coleman Brothers, on a Columbia Broadcasting System program (March, 10 1947), Hootenanny: A musical carpet of American folk music, hosted by John Henry Faulk, written and directed by Alan Lomax, and announced by Bill Rogers. It is reproduced on “Folk Music Radio” (Radiola series 16, release 133) and can be found in our library, VIA-308. (3-10-47).
On April 19, 1941, at RCA Studios on 24th St, in New York City, in an early instance of overdubbing, Bechet recorded the “Sheik of Araby.” He tells us (in the liner notes of George Hoefer) that he “started by playing ‘The Sheik’ on piano, and played the drums while listening to the piano. I meant to play all the rhythm instruments, but got all mixed up and grabbed my soprano, then the bass, then the tenor saxophone, and finally finished up with the clarinet.” Bechet also worked on recording and concert projects with the Chicago jazz pianist and vibraphonist Max Miller in 1944, 1946, and 1953, but those sessions, part of the Max Miller archive, have never been released.
In 1945, Bechet moved to 160 Quincy Street, in Brooklyn, New York, and began to teach music. Bob Wilber, then still in high school, became Bechet’s star pupil, learning both clarinet and soprano sax, and when Wilber finished high school, he moved into the house. In 1981 Wilber and his wife, soprano Pug Horton, formed a sextet, the Bechet Legacy, to continue the tradition.
Bechet relocated to France in 1950 and married Elisabeth Ziegler (whom he had met in 1928) in Antibes in 1951. Much of his later life Bechet spent in France, his affection for that country being reflected in such titles as “Petite fleur,” “Rue des Champs Elysées,” and “Si tous vois ma mere,” while “Quincy Street Stomp” clearly refers to his Brooklyn days.
Shortly before his death in Paris on his 62d birthday, May 14, 1959, Bechet dictated his autobiography, Treat It Gentle (London: Cassell, 1960). His influence extended far: among the existentialists of Paris, he was le dieu; the British poet Philip Larkin wrote an ode to Bechet in The Whitsun Weddings; Sugar Blue, the well-known harmonica player, claims he took his name from Bechet’s recording, “Sugar Blues”; Hermann Hesse, exposed to jazz and its world in the music and person of Bechet in the 1920s, may have used him as the prototype for the saxophonist, Pablo, in his novel, Steppenwolf; and Woody Allen, a clarinetist himself, refers often to Bechet in his 1997 documentary, Wild Man Blues and named one of his children after him.
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Best Known Recording’s of Sidney Bechet
The Legendary Sidney Bechet
includes early "Feetwarmers" and "Blues In Thirds"
Sidney Bechet In New York
includes reunion with Louis Armstrong
The King Jazz Story Vol.4
Storyville, Best of Bechet-Mezzrows
Jazz Classics Vol.1
includes Bunk Johnson, Albert Nicholas
Band Or Session Leader
New Orleans Feetwarmers King Bechet Trio
Mezzrow - Spanier Big Four Sidney Bechet's Blue Note Quartet
Mezzrow - Bechet Quintet Mezzrow - Bechet Septet
Sidney Bechet and his Creole Orchestra Sidney Bechet and his Orchestra
ALBERTO SOCCARAS
In the 1950s he took part in Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone on TV, and offered concerts of cult music at the Carnegie Hall in New York. In the 60s he dedicated himself to teaching, but also made some recordings. In 1983 he was filmed by Gustavo Paredes playing the flute in a TV documentary Música. --------------- --------------- Born: September 19, 1908 Died: August 26, 1987 Source: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=4485
Alberto Socarrás Estacio, (Manzanillo, 19 September 1908 – New York, 26 August 1987), was a Cuban-American flautist who played both Cuban music and jazz.
Socarras started learning the flute in 1915 with his mother, Dolores Estacio, and later joined the provincial music conservatory at Santiago de Cuba. He completed his studies at the Timothy Music Conservatory in New York, gaining the equivalent title to a doctorate in music. In the middle 1920s he moved to Havana to join the theatre orchestra of Arquimedes Pous, where his sister Estrella was playing the violin. He also played in one or two early Cuban jazz bands (Early Cuban jazz) before moving to the United States in 1927.
In the US he recorded with Clarence Williams in 1927 and began taking jazz flute solos as early as 1929, making him the earliest known jazz flute soloist (earlier even than Wayman Carver). He played with The Blackbirds revue between 1928 and 1933, and plays on Lizzie Miles's 1928 recording "You're Such a Cruel Papa to Me". In 1933 he played with Benny Carter, then led the all-female Cuban band Anacaona on a tour of Europe in 1934. In 1935 he played with Sam Wooding and led his own bands from 1935 into the 1940s; his sidemen included Edgar Sampson and Mongo Santamaria, and Cab Calloway as a singer. He also played with Erskine Hawkins in 1937. He made only one recording session in 1935, with four numbers.
Biography by Scott Yanow
The first jazz flute soloist in history (predating the better-known Wayman Carver by several years), Albert Socarras made records with Clarence Williams starting in 1927 and took occasional flute solos at least as early as 1929. He began his career playing in his native Cuba, moving to the U.S. in 1927. A technically skilled musician, Socarras played all the reeds (particularly alto and clarinet) and worked with the Blackbirds shows of 1928-33. He was with Benny Carter for a short period in 1933, ran an all-girls band that toured Europe in 1934, toured with Sam Wooding the following year and mainly led his own groups other than being briefly with Erskine Hawkins in 1937. A talented classical solo flutist and an educator, Socarras worked outside of jazz after the 1930's. However when one hears his flute solos from the 1920's (including one in which he is followed by some rambunctious Cyrus St. Clair tuba-playing), Albert Socarras (who only led a single record date of his own, four songs with a Cuban-oriented band in 1935) sounds quite futuristic! It is a pity that his flute playing was not utilized more in jazz.
Alberto Socarras - clarinet, flute, alto and soprano sax, bandleader,(1908 - 1987)
Alberto Socarras is credited with recording the first real jazz flute piece in 1927. Socarras was a highly proficient Cuban clarinetist, and bandleader, who after his arrival in New York, performed with Lew Leslie's Blackbirds, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.
Socarras playing a flute recorded “Shootin' The Pistol” in 1927 with the Clarence Williams Band. His other recordings include “You're Such a Cruel Papa To Me,” with vocalist Lizzie Miles in 1928, and “You Can't Be Mine,”in 1930, with Bennett's Swamplanders. He would also join up with the Blackbirds Revue, and Rhapsody in Black, musical troupes for tours of Europe.
In the thirties Alberto Socarras went on to lead his own bands both in the U.S. and abroad, as the one in ‘34 that was billed as “Alberto Socarrás and his Magic Flute Orchestra.” Other configurations featured first rate sidemen such as Cab Calloway and Mongo Santamaria, both later to achieve international fame as band leaders in their own right. In his heyday he was broadcasting live on WMCA from the Latin Campomar Club in NYC, where he brought in a young Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, who later would say of Socarras, “the Cuban maestro with the magic flute.”
Socarras went on to achieve quite a reputation as an enduring bandleader, and also did scores of studio and sideman stints especially for the Columbia label, who was marketing music specifically for the Latin American audience.
After receiving his degree in music from the Timothy Musical Conservatory in 1944, he went on to record “Rumba Clasica,” for the RCA label in 1947. He went into teaching, as well as keeping his band going well into the ’50’s, surfacing in the ‘60’s on dates with Tito Puente.
Though his place in jazz history may be just a footnote, Alberto Socarras played a vital role in the development and nurturing of Latin jazz in its original stages.
Albverto Socarras passed on Aug. 26, 1987.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
BENNY GOODMAN
Benny Goodman, born Benjamin David Goodman, (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz musician, clarinetist and bandleader, known as "King of Swing", "Patriarch of the Clarinet", "The Professor", and "Swing's Senior Statesman".
Childhood and early years
Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw, his mother was Dora Rezinski (from Kaunas) and his actual birth name was Beno. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.
When Benny was 10, his father enrolled him and two of his 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.
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.
Goodman's father, David, was a working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, Downbeat, February 8, 1956); "...Pop worked in the stockyards, shoveling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he'd come home 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, shoveling it around".
On December 9, 1929, David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident. Benny had recently joined the Pollack band and was urging his father to retire, since he (Benny) and his brother (Harry) were now doing well as professional musicians. According to James Lincoln Collier, "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 father had not lived to see the success he, and some of the others, made of themselves." "Benny described his father's death as 'the saddest thing that ever happened in our family.'"
Career
Goodman left for New York City and became a successful session musician during the late 1920s and early 1930s (mostly with Ben Pollack's band between 1926 and around 1929). 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 (although he is not on any of Jones' records), 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.
During this period as a successful session musician, John Hammond arranged for a series of jazz sides recorded for and issued on Columbia starting in 1933 and continuing until his signing up with Victor in 1935, which was during his success on radio. (There was a number of commercial studio sides recorded for Melotone between late 1930 and mid-1931 under Goodman's name, as well). The all-star Columbia sides featured Jack Teagarden, Joe Sullivan, Dick McDonough, Arthur Schutt, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins (for 1 session), and as vocalists, Jack Teagarden, Mildred Bailey, and the first two recorded vocals by a young Billie Holiday. All of these Columbia sides are widely acknowledged as jazz masterpieces.
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 and though known only in Harlem, Chick Webb passed over his "King of Swing" title to Goodman. 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.
Palomar Ballroom engagement
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:
At the beginning of the next set, Goodman told the band to put aside the stock arrangements and called for charts by Fletcher Henderson and other swing arrangers who were writing for the band. When trumpeter Bunny Berigan played his solos on Henderson’s versions of "Sometimes I'm Happy" and "King Porter Stomp," the Palomar dancers cheered like crazy and exploded with applause! They gathered around the bandstand to listen to this new music.
This was the music the enthusiastic audience had heard on the "Let's Dance" radio show and that they had come to hear.
Over the nights of the engagement, a new dance labeled the "Jitterbug" captured the dancers on the floor, and a new craze had begun. Onlookers gathered around the edges of the ballroom floor. Within days of the opening, newspapers around the country were headlining stories about the new phenomenon that had started at the Palomar. Goodman was finally a nationally known star, and the Swing Era began, led by Goodman. Following this the big band era exploded.
Carnegie Hall concert
In bringing jazz to Carnegie, [Benny Goodman was], in effect, smuggling American contraband into the halls of European high culture, and Goodman and his 15 men pull[ed] it off with the audacity and precision of Ocean's Eleven.
In late 1937, Goodman's publicist Wynn Nathanson attempted a publicity stunt in the form of suggesting Goodman and his band should play Carnegie Hall in New York City. "Benny Goodman was initially hesitant about the concert, fearing for the worst; however, when his film Hollywood Hotel opened to rave reviews and giant lines, he threw himself into the work. He gave up several dates and insisted on holding rehearsals inside Carnegie Hall to familiarize the band with the lively acoustics."
The concert was the evening of January 16, 1938. It sold out weeks before, with the capacity 2,760 seats going for the top price of US$2.75 a seat, for the time a very high price. The concert began with three contemporary numbers from the Goodman band—"Don't Be That Way," "Sometimes I'm Happy," and "One O'Clock Jump." Then came a history of jazz, starting with a Dixieland quartet performing "Sensation Rag." Once again, initial crowd reaction, though polite, was tepid. Then came a jam session on "Honeysuckle Rose" featuring members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands as guests. It did not go as well as hoped. As the concert went on, things livened up. The Goodman band and quartet took over the stage and performed the numbers that had already made them famous. Some of the later trio and quartet numbers were well-received, and a vocal on "Loch Lomond" by Martha Tilton, though nothing special, provoked five curtain calls and cries for an encore. The encore forced Goodman to make his only audience announcement for the night, stating that they had no encore prepared but that Martha would return shortly with another number.
By the time the band got to the climactic piece "Sing, Sing, Sing," success of the night was assured. Bettering the commercial 12-inch record, this live performance featured playing by tenor saxophonist Babe Russin, trumpeter Harry James, and then Benny Goodman, backed by drummer Gene Krupa in accompaniment. But the really unforgettable moment came when Goodman finished his solo and unexpectedly tossed the ball to pianist Jess Stacy. "At the Carnegie Hall concert, after the usual theatrics, Jess Stacy was allowed to solo and, given the venue, what followed was appropriate. Used to just playing rhythm on the tune, he was unprepared for a turn in the spotlight, but what came out of his fingers was a graceful, impressionistic marvel with classical flourishes, yet still managed to swing. It was the best thing he ever did, and it's ironic that such a layered, nuanced performance came at the end of such a chaotic, bombastic tune."
This concert has been regarded by some as the most significant in jazz history. After years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences. While the big band era would not last for much longer, it was from this point forward that the ground work for multiple other genres of popular music was laid.
Recordings were made of this concert, but even by the technology of the day the equipment used was not of the finest quality. Acetate recordings of the concert were made, and aluminum studio masters were also cut.
The recording was produced by Albert Marx as a special gift for his wife, Helen Ward and a second set for Benny. He contracted Artists Recording Studio to make 2 sets. Artists Recording only had 2 turntables so they farmed out the second set to Raymond Scott's recording studio. [...] It was Benny's sister-in-law who found the recordings in Benny's apartment [in 1950] and brought them to Benny's attention.
Goodman took the newly discovered recording to his record company, Columbia, and a selection from them was issued on LP. These recording have not been out of print since they were first issued.
In early 1998, the aluminum masters were rediscovered and a new CD set of the concert was released based on these masters.
Charlie Christian
Pianist/arranger Mary Lou Williams was a good friend of both Columbia records producer John Hammond and Benny Goodman. She first suggested to John Hammond that he see Charlie Christian.
Charlie Christian was playing at the Ritz in Oklahoma City where John Hammond heard him in 1939. Hammond recommended him to Benny Goodman, but the band leader wasn't interested. The idea of an electrified guitar didn't appeal, and Goodman didn't care for Christian's flashy style of dressing. Reportedly, Hammond personally installed Christian onstage during a break in a Goodman concert in Beverly Hills. Irritated to see Christian among the band, Goodman struck up "Rose Room," not expecting the guitarist to know the tune. What followed amazed everyone who heard the 45-minute performance.
Charlie was a hit on the electric guitar and remained in the Benny Goodman Sextet for two years (1939-1941). He wrote many of the group's head arrangements (some of which Goodman took credit for) and was an inspiration to all. The sextet made him famous and provided him with a steady income while Charlie worked on legitimizing, popularizing, revolutionizing, and standardizing the electric guitar as a jazz instrument.
Christian eventually stayed in New York City, jamming with bop musicians at Minton's in Harlem. "Charlie impressed them all by improvising long lines that emphasized off beats, and by using altered chords."[21] Charlie Christian died in Staten Island, March 2, 1942 of tuberculosis. Helping to broaden the form of jazz, Benny Goodman gave the nascent talent a huge start. Charlie Christian's recordings and rehearsal dubs he made at Columbia records with Benny Goodman in the early forties are widely known and widely respected.
Beyond swing
Goodman with his band and singer, Peggy Lee, in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943)
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.
Bebop, Cool Jazz
By the 1940s, jazz musicians were borrowing some of the more advanced ideas that classical musicians had been using. Bebop and then later cool jazz were beginning to be heard. The recordings Goodman made in the bop style for Capitol Records were highly praised by jazz critics. When Goodman was starting a bebop band, he hired Buddy Greco, Zoot Sims, Wardell Gray and a few other modern players.
Pianist/arranger Mary Lou Williams had been a favorite of Benny's since she first appeared on the national scene in 1936. [A]s Goodman warily approached the music of [Charlie] Parker and [Dizzy] Gillespie, he turned to Williams for musical guidance. Pianist Mel Powell was the first to introduce the new music to Benny in 1945, and kept him abreast to what was happening around 52nd Street.
Goodman enjoyed the new music of bebop and cool jazz that was beginning to arrive in the nineteen forties. When Goodman heard Thelonious Monk, a celebrated pianist and accompanist to bop players Parker, Gillespie and Kenny Clarke, he remarked, "I like it, I like that very much. I like the piece and I like the way he played it. I think he's got a sense of humor and he's got some good things there."
Benny Goodman (third from left) in 1952 with some of his former musicians, seated around piano left to right: Vernon Brown, George Auld, Gene Krupa, Clint Neagley, Ziggy Elman, Israel Crosby and Teddy Wilson (at piano)
Benny had heard this Swedish clarinet player named Stan Hasselgard playing bebop, and he loved it ... So he started a bebop band. But after a year and a half, he became frustrated. He eventually reformed his band and went back to playing Fletcher Henderson arrangements. Benny was a swing player and decided to concentrate on what he does best.
By 1953, Goodman completely changed his mind about bebop. "Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything [...] Basically it's all wrong. It's not even knowing the scales. Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles."
Forays into the classical repertoire
Goodman's first classical recording dates from April 25, 1938 when he recorded Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. After his bop period, Goodman furthered his interest in classical music written for the clarinet, and frequently met with top classical clarinetists of the day as well.
In 1949, when he was 40, Goodman decided to study with Reginald Kell, one of the world's leading classical clarinetists. To do so, he had to change his entire technique: instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and even to use new fingering techniques. He had his old finger calluses removed and started to learn how to play his clarinet again--almost from scratch.
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."[28] 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.
Other recordings of classical repertoire by Goodman are:
Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet by Claude Debussy
Sonata no. 2 in E flat by Johannes Brahms
Rondo from Grand Duo Concertant in E flat from Carl Maria von Weber, and
An arrangement by Simeon Bellison of van Beethoven's Variations on a theme from Mozart's Don Giovanni
Touring with "Satchmo"
After forays outside of swing, Goodman started a new band in 1953. According to Donald Clarke, this was not a happy time for Goodman.
In 1953 Goodman re-formed his classic band for an expensive tour with Louis Armstrong’s All Stars that turned into a famous disaster. He managed to insult Armstrong at the beginning; then he was appalled at the vaudeville aspects of Louis’s act a contradiction of everything Goodman stood for.
The movies
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 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.
The film will be released in the UK for the first time on DVD on 22nd September 2008 by Eureka Entertainment
Personality and influence on American popular music
Goodman was regarded by some as a demanding taskmaster, by others an arrogant and eccentric martinet. Many musicians spoke of "The Ray", Goodman's trademark glare that he bestowed on a musician who failed to perform to his demanding standards. Guitarist Allan Reuss incurred the maestro's displeasure on one occasion, and Goodman relegated him to the rear of the bandstand, where his contribution would be totally drowned out by the other musicians. Vocalists Anita O'Day and Helen Forrest spoke bitterly of their experiences singing with Goodman. "The twenty or so months I spent with Benny felt like twenty years," said Forrest. "When I look back, they seem like a life sentence." At the same time, there are reports that he privately funded several college educations and was sometimes very generous, though always secretly. When a friend asked him why one time, he reportedly said, "Well, if they knew about it, everyone would come to me with their hand out."
Some suggest that Elvis Presley had the same success with rock and roll that Goodman achieved with jazz and swing. Both helped bring black music to a young, white audience. Some suggest that without Goodman there would not have been a swing era. It is true that many of Goodman's arrangements had been played for years before by Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. While Goodman publicly acknowledged his debt to Henderson, many young white swing fans had never heard Henderson's band. While most consider Goodman a jazz innovator, others maintain his main strength was his perfectionism and drive. Goodman was a virtuoso clarinetist and amongst the most technically proficient jazz clarinetists of all time."As far as I'm concerned, what he did in those days—and they were hard days, in 1937—made it possible for Negroes to have their chance in baseball and other fields."
—Lionel Hampton on Benny Goodman
Goodman is also responsible for a significant step in racial integration in America. In the early 1930s, black and white jazz musicians could not play together in most clubs or concerts. In the Southern states, racial segregation was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. Benny Goodman broke with tradition by hiring Teddy Wilson to play with him and drummer Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman Trio. In 1936, he added Lionel Hampton on vibes to form the Benny Goodman Quartet; in 1939 he added pioneering jazz guitarist Charlie Christian to his band and small ensembles, who played with him until his untimely death from tuberculosis less than three years later. This integration in music happened ten years before Jackie Robinson became the first black American to enter Major League Baseball. "[Goodman's] popularity was such that he could remain financially viable without touring the South, where he would have been subject to arrest for violating Jim Crow laws." According to Jazz by Ken Burns, when someone asked him why he "played with that nigger" (referring to Teddy Wilson), Goodman replied, "I'll knock you out if you use that word around me again".
John Hammond and Alice Goodman
One of Benny Goodman's closest friends off and on, from the 1930s onward was celebrated Columbia records producer John H. Hammond.
John Henry Hammond II was born December 15, 1910 in an eight-story mansion in New York City. He was the son of James Henry Hammond, a very successful businessman and lawyer, and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, an heir to the Sloan Furniture and - as a granddaughter of William Henry Vanderbilt - to the Vanderbilt fortunes. John H. Hammond II attended the esteemed Hotchkiss Prep School and Yale University.
Hammond and Goodman were so close that Hammond influenced Goodman's move from RCA records to the newly created Columbia records in 1939. Benny Goodman dated John H. Hammond's sister, Alice Frances Hammond (1913 - 1978) for three months. They married on March 14, 1942. They had two daughters, Benjie and Rachel. Both daughters studied music to some degree, though neither became the musical prodigy Goodman was. Hammond had encouraged Goodman to integrate his band, having persuaded him to employ pianist Teddy Wilson. He all but forced Goodman to audition Charlie Christian, Goodman believing no one would listen to an electric guitarist. But Hammond's tendency to interfere in the musical affairs of Goodman's and other bands led to Goodman pulling away from him. In 1953 they had another falling-out during Goodman's ill-fated tour with Louis Armstrong, which was produced by John Hammond. Goodman appeared on a 1975 PBS salute to Hammond but remained at a distance. In the 1980s, following the death of Alice Goodman, John Hammond and Benny Goodman, both by then elderly, reconciled. On June 25, 1985, Goodman appeared at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City for "A Tribute to John Hammond".
Later years
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.[42] 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, in his home at Manhattan House, 200 East 66th Street. 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.[43] Benny Goodman's musical papers were donated to Yale University after his death.
He is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division.
Discography
(This discography combines LP and CD reissues of Goodman recordings under the dates of the original 78 rpm recordings through about 1950)
A Jazz Holiday (1928, Decca)
Benny Goodman and the Giants of Swing (1929, Prestige)
BG and Big Tea in NYC (1929, GRP)
Swinging '34 Vols. 1 & 2 (1934, Melodean)
Sing, Sing, Sing (1935, Bluebird)
The Birth of Swing (1935, Bluebird)
Original Benny Goodman Trio and Quartet Sessions, Vol. 1: After You've Gone (1935, Bluebird)
Stomping at the Savoy (1935, Bluebird)
Air Play (1936, Doctor Jazz)
Roll 'Em, Vol. 1 (1937, Columbia)
Roll 'Em, Vol. 2 (1937, CBS)
From Spirituals to Swing (1938, Vanguard)
Carnegie Hall Concert Vols. 1, 2, & 3 (Live) (1938, Columbia)
Mozart Clarinet Quintet (with Budapest String Quartet) (1938, Victor)
Ciribiribin (Live) (1939, Giants of Jazz)
Swingin' Down the Lane (Live) (1939, Giants of Jazz)
Featuring Charlie Christian (1939, Columbia)
Eddie Sauter Arrangements (1940, Columbia)
Swing Into Spring (1941, Columbia)
Undercurrent Blues (1947, Blue Note)
Swedish Pastry (1948, Dragon)
The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert (1950, Columbia)
Sextet (1950, Columbia)
BG in Hi-fi (1954, Capitol)
The Benny Goodman Story Volume 1 (1955?, Decca)
The Benny Goodman Story Volume 1 (1955?, Decca)
Mozart Clarinet concerto (with Boston symphomy) (1956)
Peggy Lee Sings with Benny Goodman (1957, Harmony)
Benny in Brussels Vols. 1 & 2 (1958, Columbia)
In Stockholm 1959 (1959, Phontastic)
The Benny Goodman Treasure Chest (1959, MGM)
Swing With Benny Goodman And His Orchestra (1960s?, Columbia/Harmony)
Benny Goodman in Moscow (1962, RCA Victor)
Benny Goodman And His Orchestra (1977)
The King Swings Star Line
Pure Gold (1992)
1935-1938 (1998)
Portrait of Benny Goodman (Portrait Series) (1998)
Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert '38 (1998)
Bill Dodge All-star Recording (1999)
1941-1955 His Orchestra and His (1999)
Live at Carnegie Hall (1999)
Carnegie Hall: The Complete Concert (2006) Remastered again
References
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 19.
the days
The Official Benny Goodman Website
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 18.
a b "JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns: Selected Artist Biography - Benny Goodman". PBS. 2001-01-08. Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 26–34.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 35.
Collier, James Lincoln (1989). Benny Goodman and the Swing Era. Oxford University Press.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 42.
Firestone, Ross. Op. cit.; p. 134
a b "70 Years Ago: Goodman Opens at the Palomar". 2005-08-20. Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
BBC (2006-03-22). "Jitterbug". Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
Will Friedwald (2006-11-20). "Arts and Letters: Peplowski Blows Back to His Roots". Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
Mike Joyce. "The 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert". Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
"insert booklet", "The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert" Sony 199 2 CD reissue .
David Rickert (2005-01-31). "Benny Goodman: "Sing, Sing, Sing"". Retrieved on 2007-03-29.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 366.
Mary Lou Williams: "Swinger with a Mission", by Catherine O'Neill, "Books & Arts," 12/7/79
Charles Christian: Musician
Texas Monthly: Texas Music Source
a b Biography2
Big Band Era Recording Ban Of 1942
Jazz History Time Line
a b c Schoenberg, Loren (1995), "Liner Notes", Benny Goodman: Undercurrent Blues, Capitol.
Post-Gazette. May 8, 2005. Nate Guidry. A Life in Tune: New works trumpet Doc Wilson's longevity on the music scene
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 354.
Current Biography (1962). The H. W. Wilson Company. Benny Goodman
Three Cheers for Yeh!
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 246–247, 250, 252, 324.
Available on compact disc: Benny Goodman - Clarinet Classics, Pavilion Records Ltd. Pearl GEM0057
Donald Clarke. "The Rise and Fall of Popular Music". Retrieved on 2007-02-30.[dead link]
IMDb: The Benny Goodman Story (1955)
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 173.
a b Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 296, 301–302, 401.
"Ibid"; Firestone, Ross p. 183-184.
Benny Goodman
Charlie Dahan. "Jazz Impressario: John Hammond". Retrieved on 2007-03-30.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 258–259.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 309–310.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 380.
John S. Wilson (1985-06-29). "JAZZ FESTIVAL; BENNY GOODMAN JOINS JOHN HAMMOND TRIBUTE". New York Times. Retrieved on 2007-04-02.
Firestone, Ross (1993). Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman. New York: Norton. pp. 433–434.
"Lifetime Achievement Award". The Recording Academy. Retrieved on 2007-04-02.
"NAB Hall of Fame". National Association of Broadcasters. Retrieved on 3 May 2008.
External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman official site
Benny Goodman Biography at PBS Kids
Benny Goodman scores (a portion of the musician's estate) in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Benny Goodman papers (the bulk of the musician's estate) in Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University
Benny Goodman biography
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For a kid who liked jazz, Chicago was a great town to grow up in. Musicians had begun working their way north from New Orleans about the turn of the century, and by the early 1920s giants like "Jellyroll" Morton, Sidney Bechet, "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were playing in Chicago and making history.
Kids who paid attention to this development were going to make history themselves in a few more years - Bud Freeman, Davie Tough, Eddie Condon, Milt Mesirow (Mezz Mezzrow), Gene Krupa, "Muggsy" Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Jess Stacy - and a kid in short pants who played the clarinet.
Benny Goodman was only 10 when he first picked up a clarinet. Only a year or so later he was doing Ted Lewis imitations for pocket money. At 14 he was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke. By the time he was 16 he was recognized as a "comer" as far away as the west coast and was asked to join a California-based band led by another Chicago boy, Ben Pollack.
Goodman played with Pollack's band for the next four years. His earliest recording was made with Pollack, but he was also recording under his own name in Chicago and New York, where the band had migrated from the west coast. In 1929, when he was just 20, Benny struck out on his own to become a typical New York freelance musician, playing studio dates, leading a pit orchestra, making himself a seasoned professional.
By 1934 he was seasoned enough to be ready for his first big break. He heard that Billy Rose needed a band for his new theatre restaurant, the Music Hall, and he got together a group of musicians who shared his enthusiasm for jazz. They auditioned and got the job.
Then Benny heard that NBC was looking for three bands to rotate on a new Saturday night broadcast to be called "Let's Dance," a phrase that has been associated with the Goodman band ever since. One band on the show was to be sweet, one Latin, and the third hot. The Goodman band was hot enough to get the job, but not hot enough to satisfy Benny. He brought in Gene Krupa on drums. Fletcher Henderson began writing the arrangements - arrangements that still sound fresh more than a half century later. And the band rehearsed endlessly to achieve the precise tempos, section playing and phrasing that ushered in a new era in American music. There was only one word that could describe this band's style adequately: Swing.
After six months of broadcasting coast to coast the band was ready for a cross-country tour. The band was ready but the country was not. The tour was a disaster until its last date in August, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The only plausible explanation for what happened there is that "Let's Dance" was aired three hours earlier on the west coast than in the east. The kids in Los Angeles had been listening, and thousands of them turned out to hear the band in person at the Palomar. They hadn't even come to dance; instead they crowded around the bandstand just to listen. It was a new kind of music with a new kind of audience, and their meeting at the Palomar made national headlines.
When the band headed east again, after nearly two months at the Palomar, they were famous. They played for seven months at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where Teddy Wilson joined them to complete the Benny Goodman Trio. Back in New York Lionel Hampton made it the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the band was a sensation at the Hotel Pennsylvania's Madhattan Room.
The band made it even bigger at the Paramount Theatre, where lines began forming at breakfast time and continued through the last daily show. It was grueling for the kids who waited for hours to dance in the aisles. It was more grueling for the band; they returned each night to the Madhattan Room for still more swing.
At the age of 28 Benny Goodman had reached what seemed to be the pinnacle of success. The new radio program, "The Camel Caravan," was scheduled in prime time, and the whole nation listened not only to the band itself but to the intelligent commentary by some of the most influential critics of the day, including Clifton Fadiman and Robert Benchley.
But it was not quite the pinnacle. On January 16, 1938, Sol Hurok, the most prestigious impresario in America, booked the Benny Goodman band into Carnegie Hall. For generations Carnegie Hall had been the nation's greatest temple of musical art, home of the New York Philharmonic and scene of every important artist's debut (even if they had played in a hundred other concert halls first).
So this was a debut not only for Benny Goodman but for jazz. Though many others followed him to Carnegie Hall, there has never been another concert with such an impact. It even made his "classical" Carnegie Hall debut more newsworthy a few years later when Benny returned there to launch his second career, as a soloist with major symphony orchestras and chamber groups.
Benny Goodman was indisputably the King of Swing - the title was invented by Gene Krupa - and he reigned as such thereafter until his death in 1986 at age 77. Over the years he played with the greatest figures in jazz: Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Mildred Bailey, Bessie Smith and countless others. Many of those who played with him as sidemen later achieved fame as leaders of their own bands, as soloists, or even as movie or TV actors - Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton to name a few. A list of Benny's hits would fill a book. In fact it filled several books by his devoted discographer/biographer Russ Connor.
That crowded career, spanning more than six decades, had an almost unparalleled impact on popular music and the importance of the clarinet in both jazz and classical music. Thousands of youngsters throughout the world were influenced to play the clarinet through listening to Benny Goodman's recordings and live performances, and the style of those who turned to jazz was universally patterned after what they heard Benny play, whether or not they realized it. The popularity of the "big band" format is another of the legacies of this musical giant.
Source: For a kid who liked jazz, Chicago was a great town to grow up in. Musicians had begun working their way north from New Orleans about the turn of the century, and by the early 1920s giants like "Jellyroll" Morton, Sidney Bechet, "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were playing in Chicago and making history.
Kids who paid attention to this development were going to make history themselves in a few more years - Bud Freeman, Davie Tough, Eddie Condon, Milt Mesirow (Mezz Mezzrow), Gene Krupa, "Muggsy" Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Jess Stacy - and a kid in short pants who played the clarinet.
Benny Goodman was only 10 when he first picked up a clarinet. Only a year or so later he was doing Ted Lewis imitations for pocket money. At 14 he was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke. By the time he was 16 he was recognized as a "comer" as far away as the west coast and was asked to join a California-based band led by another Chicago boy, Ben Pollack.
Goodman played with Pollack's band for the next four years. His earliest recording was made with Pollack, but he was also recording under his own name in Chicago and New York, where the band had migrated from the west coast. In 1929, when he was just 20, Benny struck out on his own to become a typical New York freelance musician, playing studio dates, leading a pit orchestra, making himself a seasoned professional.
By 1934 he was seasoned enough to be ready for his first big break. He heard that Billy Rose needed a band for his new theatre restaurant, the Music Hall, and he got together a group of musicians who shared his enthusiasm for jazz. They auditioned and got the job.
Then Benny heard that NBC was looking for three bands to rotate on a new Saturday night broadcast to be called "Let's Dance," a phrase that has been associated with the Goodman band ever since. One band on the show was to be sweet, one Latin, and the third hot. The Goodman band was hot enough to get the job, but not hot enough to satisfy Benny. He brought in Gene Krupa on drums. Fletcher Henderson began writing the arrangements - arrangements that still sound fresh more than a half century later. And the band rehearsed endlessly to achieve the precise tempos, section playing and phrasing that ushered in a new era in American music. There was only one word that could describe this band's style adequately: Swing.
After six months of broadcasting coast to coast the band was ready for a cross-country tour. The band was ready but the country was not. The tour was a disaster until its last date in August, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The only plausible explanation for what happened there is that "Let's Dance" was aired three hours earlier on the west coast than in the east. The kids in Los Angeles had been listening, and thousands of them turned out to hear the band in person at the Palomar. They hadn't even come to dance; instead they crowded around the bandstand just to listen. It was a new kind of music with a new kind of audience, and their meeting at the Palomar made national headlines.
When the band headed east again, after nearly two months at the Palomar, they were famous. They played for seven months at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where Teddy Wilson joined them to complete the Benny Goodman Trio. Back in New York Lionel Hampton made it the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the band was a sensation at the Hotel Pennsylvania's Madhattan Room.
The band made it even bigger at the Paramount Theatre, where lines began forming at breakfast time and continued through the last daily show. It was grueling for the kids who waited for hours to dance in the aisles. It was more grueling for the band; they returned each night to the Madhattan Room for still more swing.
At the age of 28 Benny Goodman had reached what seemed to be the pinnacle of success. The new radio program, "The Camel Caravan," was scheduled in prime time, and the whole nation listened not only to the band itself but to the intelligent commentary by some of the most influential critics of the day, including Clifton Fadiman and Robert Benchley.
But it was not quite the pinnacle. On January 16, 1938, Sol Hurok, the most prestigious impresario in America, booked the Benny Goodman band into Carnegie Hall. For generations Carnegie Hall had been the nation's greatest temple of musical art, home of the New York Philharmonic and scene of every important artist's debut (even if they had played in a hundred other concert halls first).
So this was a debut not only for Benny Goodman but for jazz. Though many others followed him to Carnegie Hall, there has never been another concert with such an impact. It even made his "classical" Carnegie Hall debut more newsworthy a few years later when Benny returned there to launch his second career, as a soloist with major symphony orchestras and chamber groups.
Benny Goodman was indisputably the King of Swing - the title was invented by Gene Krupa - and he reigned as such thereafter until his death in 1986 at age 77. Over the years he played with the greatest figures in jazz: Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Mildred Bailey, Bessie Smith and countless others. Many of those who played with him as sidemen later achieved fame as leaders of their own bands, as soloists, or even as movie or TV actors - Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton to name a few. A list of Benny's hits would fill a book. In fact it filled several books by his devoted discographer/biographer Russ Connor.
That crowded career, spanning more than six decades, had an almost unparalleled impact on popular music and the importance of the clarinet in both jazz and classical music. Thousands of youngsters throughout the world were influenced to play the clarinet through listening to Benny Goodman's recordings and live performances, and the style of those who turned to jazz was universally patterned after what they heard Benny play, whether or not they realized it. The popularity of the "big band" format is another of the legacies of this musical giant.
Source: For a kid who liked jazz, Chicago was a great town to grow up in. Musicians had begun working their way north from New Orleans about the turn of the century, and by the early 1920s giants like "Jellyroll" Morton, Sidney Bechet, "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were playing in Chicago and making history.
Kids who paid attention to this development were going to make history themselves in a few more years - Bud Freeman, Davie Tough, Eddie Condon, Milt Mesirow (Mezz Mezzrow), Gene Krupa, "Muggsy" Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Jess Stacy - and a kid in short pants who played the clarinet.
Benny Goodman was only 10 when he first picked up a clarinet. Only a year or so later he was doing Ted Lewis imitations for pocket money. At 14 he was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke. By the time he was 16 he was recognized as a "comer" as far away as the west coast and was asked to join a California-based band led by another Chicago boy, Ben Pollack.
Goodman played with Pollack's band for the next four years. His earliest recording was made with Pollack, but he was also recording under his own name in Chicago and New York, where the band had migrated from the west coast. In 1929, when he was just 20, Benny struck out on his own to become a typical New York freelance musician, playing studio dates, leading a pit orchestra, making himself a seasoned professional.
By 1934 he was seasoned enough to be ready for his first big break. He heard that Billy Rose needed a band for his new theatre restaurant, the Music Hall, and he got together a group of musicians who shared his enthusiasm for jazz. They auditioned and got the job.
Then Benny heard that NBC was looking for three bands to rotate on a new Saturday night broadcast to be called "Let's Dance," a phrase that has been associated with the Goodman band ever since. One band on the show was to be sweet, one Latin, and the third hot. The Goodman band was hot enough to get the job, but not hot enough to satisfy Benny. He brought in Gene Krupa on drums. Fletcher Henderson began writing the arrangements - arrangements that still sound fresh more than a half century later. And the band rehearsed endlessly to achieve the precise tempos, section playing and phrasing that ushered in a new era in American music. There was only one word that could describe this band's style adequately: Swing.
After six months of broadcasting coast to coast the band was ready for a cross-country tour. The band was ready but the country was not. The tour was a disaster until its last date in August, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The only plausible explanation for what happened there is that "Let's Dance" was aired three hours earlier on the west coast than in the east. The kids in Los Angeles had been listening, and thousands of them turned out to hear the band in person at the Palomar. They hadn't even come to dance; instead they crowded around the bandstand just to listen. It was a new kind of music with a new kind of audience, and their meeting at the Palomar made national headlines.
When the band headed east again, after nearly two months at the Palomar, they were famous. They played for seven months at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where Teddy Wilson joined them to complete the Benny Goodman Trio. Back in New York Lionel Hampton made it the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the band was a sensation at the Hotel Pennsylvania's Madhattan Room.
The band made it even bigger at the Paramount Theatre, where lines began forming at breakfast time and continued through the last daily show. It was grueling for the kids who waited for hours to dance in the aisles. It was more grueling for the band; they returned each night to the Madhattan Room for still more swing.
At the age of 28 Benny Goodman had reached what seemed to be the pinnacle of success. The new radio program, "The Camel Caravan," was scheduled in prime time, and the whole nation listened not only to the band itself but to the intelligent commentary by some of the most influential critics of the day, including Clifton Fadiman and Robert Benchley.
But it was not quite the pinnacle. On January 16, 1938, Sol Hurok, the most prestigious impresario in America, booked the Benny Goodman band into Carnegie Hall. For generations Carnegie Hall had been the nation's greatest temple of musical art, home of the New York Philharmonic and scene of every important artist's debut (even if they had played in a hundred other concert halls first).
So this was a debut not only for Benny Goodman but for jazz. Though many others followed him to Carnegie Hall, there has never been another concert with such an impact. It even made his "classical" Carnegie Hall debut more newsworthy a few years later when Benny returned there to launch his second career, as a soloist with major symphony orchestras and chamber groups.
Benny Goodman was indisputably the King of Swing - the title was invented by Gene Krupa - and he reigned as such thereafter until his death in 1986 at age 77. Over the years he played with the greatest figures in jazz: Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Mildred Bailey, Bessie Smith and countless others. Many of those who played with him as sidemen later achieved fame as leaders of their own bands, as soloists, or even as movie or TV actors - Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton to name a few. A list of Benny's hits would fill a book. In fact it filled several books by his devoted discographer/biographer Russ Connor.
That crowded career, spanning more than six decades, had an almost unparalleled impact on popular music and the importance of the clarinet in both jazz and classical music. Thousands of youngsters throughout the world were influenced to play the clarinet through listening to Benny Goodman's recordings and live performances, and the style of those who turned to jazz was universally patterned after what they heard Benny play, whether or not they realized it. The popularity of the "big band" format is another of the legacies of this musical giant.
Source: The Official Site of Benny Goodman
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Born into a large, poverty stricken family, Benny began playing the clarinet at an early age. He was associated with the Austin High School Gang, having gone to school with drummer Dave Tough. By the time he was twelve, Goodman appeared onstage imitating famous bandleader/clarinetist Ted Lewis. It was at this concert that Ben Pollack heard the young clarinetist and Benny was soon playing in Pollack’s band. Goodman’s first recordings were made with the Pollack group in 1926, and give a strong example of Benny’s influences at the time including Jimmie Noone, who was then with Doc Cook and His Dreamland Orchestra and Leon Roppolo of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. During this period Goodman recorded his first sides as a leader with members of the Pollack band including one 1928 date which features the only known recording of Benny on alto and baritone saxophones.
Following the musical migration out of Chicago and into New York, Goodman became a very successful and popular free-lancer, joining the likes of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey in New York studios. In 1934 Benny put together his first big band, featuring Bunny Berigan on trumpet, Jess Stacey on piano and Gene Krupa on drums. With the addition of some excellent, sophisticated arrangements by Fletcher Henderson, the “Swing Era” was born.
Goodman spent the next fifty years recording and touring with various groups big and small, including some very successful trips to Russia and the Far East. He also played many concerts on a classical format that received mixed reviews.
Known by musicians for his stand-offish and “cheap” nature, many sidemen had a love/hate relationship with Goodman. Many musicians claimed that Benny was dishonest when it came time to pay off the band and many more recalled the Goodman “ray”, the dirtiest of looks received when a mistake was made. That aside, its clear that without Goodman the “Swing Era” would have been nowhere near as strong when it came, if it came at all.
After his death, the Yale University library received the bulk of Goodman’s personal collection including many private never-before-heard recordings and rare unpublished photos.
Source: Ted Gottsegen
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Benny Goodman received rudimentary musical training in 1919 at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue and the next year joined the boys club band at Jane Addams's 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.
Goodman made his professional debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater in Chicago with an imitation of Ted Lewis. After entering Harrison High School in 1922, he played occasionally with the so-called Austin High School Gang (Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, Frank Teschemacher, Dave Tough, and others), who modeled their music after the New Orleans Rhythm Kings; the clarinetist with the Rhythm Kings, Leon Roppolo, was an early influence on Goodman. During these formative years, he also absorbed the music of New Orleans musicians such as King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, and especially the clarinetists Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Buster Bailey, Albert Nicholas, and Barney Bigard.
In 1923, Goodman joined the musicians' union and played regularly with Murph Podalasky and Jules Herbevaux. That summer, on a lake excursion boat, he met Bix Beiderbecke for the first time. Beiderbecke's influence may be heard in Goodman's on-the-beat attacks, careful choice of notes, and across-the-bar phrasing on his recordings in 1928 of A Jazz Holiday and Blue. The latter especially shows these techniques in which Goodman played solos on both alto and baritone saxophone.
In August 1925, Goodman left for Los Angeles to join Ben Pollack. In January 1926, Pollack returned to Chicago, where Goodman recorded his first solo, He's The Last Word, on December 17, 1926. Early in 1928, Pollack's band went to New York, which subsequently became Goodman's base. Goodman stayed with Pollack until September 1929, but also performed with Sam Lanin, Nat Shilkret, and Meyer Davis, and from 1929 to 1934 was a leading freelance musician. He worked for radio and in recording studios for Red Nichols, Ben Selvin, Ted Lewis, Johnny Green, and Paul Whiteman, and on Broadway in George Gershwin's Strike Up The Band and Girl Crazy (both in 1930), and Richard Whiting's Free For All in 1931. His important associations with John Hammond and Teddy Wilson began during this period.
In spring 1934, Goodman organized his first big band, a 12-piece group (three saxophones, three trumpets, two trombones, and four rhythm instruments), auditioned successfully for Billy Rose's new Music Hall, and started recording for Columbia Records. His small repertory included a few distinctive arrangements by Deane Kincaide, Will Hudson, and especially Benny Carter. Carter's composition and arrangement of Take My Word, requiring four saxophones (Goodman played tenor) to play four-note chords in parallel motion in the style of improvised solos, set the standard for the treatment of saxophone sections during the swing period.
In November 1934, Goodman auditioned successfully for Let's Dance, an NBC radio series. Since the program's budget included funds for new arrangements, with Hammond's encouragement, he engaged Fletcher Henderson to write for him. Henderson's arrangements of traditional jazz instrumental numbers, for example, Jelly Roll Morton's King Porter Stomp and such popular songs as Sometimes I'm Happy, established the band's musical character. Under Goodman's exacting direction, the members' playing was a model of ensemble discipline. With his own impeccable musicianship, he set a high standard for his sidemen, from whom he demanded accurate intonation, matched vibrato, phrasing, and a careful balancing of parts — performance standards rare in the bands of that time. It was during these broadcasts that Gene Krupa joined Goodman.
In July 1935, after playing together in a jam session, Goodman asked Teddy Wilson to record with Krupa and himself. that summer, as the Benny Goodman Trio, they recorded four classic sides of jazz chamber music. Goodman's solo on After You've Gone from that session is an example of his mature style — his flawless playing utilizes almost the complete range of the instrument, and his disciplined explorations of the harmony and fondness for the blue thirds reveals the technical mastery and controlled expression that formed the essence of his art.
After the conclusion of the Let's Dance series in May 1935 and a disappointing reception at an engagement at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, Goodman's band embarked on its first tour under the auspices of Willard Alexander and the Music Corporation of America. The trip culminated in the now historic performance on August 21 before a capacity crowd at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, which was broadcast nationwide to great critical and popular acclaim, and is often cited as the beginning of the swing era. Later that year, while appearing at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, Goodman began a series of important early jazz concerts in America. For the last of these, Easter Sunday 1936, he brought in Wilson from New York.
In August 1936, the Benny Goodman Trio became a quartet with the addition of Lionel Hampton. The group made its first recording, Moonglow, on August 21. In 1936-9, Goodman's band reached the peak of its success. It began with a series of CBS broadcasts, The Camel Caravan, which continued for more than three years. They made their first films, The Big Broadcast of 1937 and Hollywood Hotel, and on March 3, 1937 began a three-week engagement at the Paramount Theater in New York.
The success of these performances, attended by a large, predominantly teenage audience, and the resultant publicity clearly demonstrated that Goodman was the "King of Swing" and a popular idol. On January 16, 1938, Goodman brought a new level of recognition to jazz with a concert in Carnegie Hall, presenting Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Jess Stacy, Hampton, Krupa, and Wilson from his own entourage, as well as guest soloists from the bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
In the same period, Goodman became the first famous jazz musician to achieve success performing classical repertory. His early training with Schoepp had prepared him for this dual career by laying the foundation for a "legitimate" clarinet technique, which he continued to improve in later study with Reginald Kell. In 1935, he performed Mozart's Clarinet Quintet before an invited audience in the home of John Hammond, and three years later he recorded the work with the Budapest String Quartet. He appeared in his first public recital at Town Hall in New York in November 1938. That year he also commissioned the work Contrasts from Bartok and gave its premiere at Carnegie Hall in January 1939. He later commissioned clarinet concertos from Copland and Hindemith in 1947. Goodman appeared with all the leading American orchestras, performing and recording works by Leonard Bernstein, Debussy, Morton Gould, Darius Milhaud, Carl Nielsen, Poulenc, Stravinsky, and Carl Maria von Weber.
In July 1940, illness forced Goodman to disband his group, and when he reformed it in October, changes in personnel gave the new band a different sound. Krupa, James, Wilson, and Stacy had already moved on, and during the hiatus of 1940 Hampton and Elman also left. New members who joined Goodman the previous year included Artie Bernstein, Fletcher Henderson, Johnny Guarnieri, Charlie Christian, and Eddie Sauter. Among the new soloists was Christian, with his long melodic lines influenced by Lester Young, who contributed most to the band, but it was the compositions and arrangements of Sauter, who had been trained at the Juilliard School, that established the band's musical character. During World War II, the recording ban by the musicians' union from August 1942 to November 1944 prevented Goodman from recording for Columbia, but he continued to make V-discs and transcriptions for the Armed Forces Radio Service.
In 1947, Goodman assembled his last and most controversial traveling band (his later groups were recruited for specific engagements) to play and record arrangements in the new bop style for Capitol Records. Although he had been critical of bop, he genuinely admired the playing of Wardell Gray, Fats Navarro, and Doug Mettome, whom he featured in the band and in his new sextet. As a soloist Goodman was more comfortable with the small group than the big band, but even there, however, few of the harmonic or rhythmic novelties of bop penetrated his style. The recording Stealin' Apples in 1948 is characteristic of this period — all the solos are in the new style except those of Goodman, who retained his classic manner. In October 1949, Goodman disbanded the group on completion of his recording contract with Capitol.
In the 1950s, Goodman continued to record and tour occasionally with ad hoc small groups and big bands, visiting Europe (1950) and, under the auspices of the US Department of State, the Far Fast (1956-7). At the conclusion of another European tour in 1958 he made a triumphant appearance in the American Pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair. The original Benny Goodman Trio was reunited for a benefit recording for Fletcher Henderson (1951) and a television appearance on NBC (1953), and also appeared in a film based on Goodman's life, The Benny Goodman Story (1956). 
In the 1960s, Goodman expanded his role as jazz ambassador with tours of South America (1961), the USSR (1962), and Japan (1964). During the 1960s and 1970s, he toured about half of each year, dividing his time between appearances with small groups and increasingly frequent commitments to performing classical works. The 40th anniversary of his concert in Carnegie Hall was celebrated there on January 17, 1978. Although he put together a big band for the occasion, he made no attempt to recreate the original program. A recording (released in 1982) with George Benson clearly demonstrated that Goodman had lost none of his creative energy or technical facility. He was one of the five recipients of the fifth annual Kennedy Center Honors awards in1982. Many of his recordings have been newly issued by Sunbeam, a label devoted largely to aspects of his work. His collection of scores, recordings, and other materials was bequeathed to Yale University.
As a jazz clarinetist, Goodman had no peer. His flawless solo improvisations set standards of excellence for jazz performance. He founded and directed the most important musical organization of the swing era and helped to open a new epoch in American popular music. He was the first white bandleader to adopt and popularize an uncompromising jazz style. He was also among the first to feature black jazz players, an action that might have compromised his own career at a time when racial integration was not a popular concept. His concerts brought a new audience and a new level of recognition to jazz.
Source: The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz
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