Benny Goodman: King of Swing - Episode 3

Curtis Stigers remembers the clarinettist and bandleader Benny Goodman in his centenary year. One of the finest clarinet players in the world, Goodman practised his art at the highest levels in both jazz and classical music. He was a bandleader who strove for, and achieved, perfection through tireless rehearsals of the various jazz ensembles he created over the decades. He was also a complex man, prone to unpredictability, who overcame an impoverished upbringing and the early death of his father to become "The King Of Swing." In the third episode, from mid-1936, Benny's reputation has built quickly, on disc, in theatres and ballrooms, and on radio. The swing-band format was already fixed, certainly in Benny's mind: five brass, four saxes and rhythm, including his brother Harry on bass. A wonderful added attraction was his Trio, featuring Teddy Wilson on piano. His singer at the time was Helen Ward and Goodman started singing himself, and very well too, a feature that would continue throughout his commercial bandleading career. Then the vibraphone player and drummer Lionel Hampton enters the picture in California, and the Benny Goodman Quartet is born. African-Americans in all branches of culture did feel "advanced" by the fact that a smash-hit jazz group featured two black men. And Goodman's integration of popular music happened ten years before Jackie Robinson entered Major League Baseball. Lionel Hampton comments: "Blacks would not play in any place on the stage and motion pictures, only job you ever saw them on the screen, they were required to be maids or butlers, but they weren't nobody in baseball, football. Benny Goodman Quartet was the front door for Jackie Robinson in the major league baseball, so it was just really a heaven-sent deal to have this great group together. And you know we all thick with each other, we all like to play with each other, we all love each other, we got along and we never had a bit of racial trouble because everybody was listening to this magnificent music". In 1938 Artie Shaw becomes more prominent with his hit recording of Begin The Beguine, a much bigger hit than anything Benny ever released, and Shaw and Goodman would remain rivals for years. Dan Morgenstern comments; "you know he [Artie Shaw] was a hit maker and that I think caused Benny to be a little miffed". Nevertheless, Benny was the more prolific recording artist, and his Carnegie Hall concert of 16 January 1938 remains one of the most famous musical events of the last century. There's long been a debate about who suggested it in the first place and we endeavour to find out more. The series features brand new interviews with jazz critic Gary Giddins; Prof. Dan Morgenstern (of the Institute for Jazz Studies at Rutgers University); clarinettist and saxophonist Ken Peplowski; Loren Schoenberg (of the Jazz Museum in Harlem); singer Louise Tobin; Sir John Dankworth and writer John Hancock. There are also rare archive contributions from Benny Goodman himself; Peggy Lee; Buddy Greco; his daughter Rachel Goodman; boyhood friend Jim Maher; biographer Ross Firestone; record executive John Hammond; bandleaders Artie Shaw, Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton; and the musicians Bob Wilber, Jerry Jerome, Louis Bellson, Nick Fatool, Jimmy Maxwell, Milt Bernhart and singer Helen Forrest.