Benny Goodman

by Vincent Bernardo

Recently, I have been listening to your airchecks of two of my favorite bands, Benny Goodman and Count Basie. Even "The Benny Goodman Story" (1955), an awful film and at least 50% fiction, could not make up the story about how Benny Goodman got his first clarinet. Benny's dad heard that Hull House in Chicago was giving music lessons to the neighborhood kids, so he took his sons down there. When all the instruments were given out, only one-a clarinet-was left, and who do you think got it? Benny hated it at first, but it was either play the clarinet, or play nothing (he really wanted his brother's trumpet). Of course, there was no way he could realize at the time that the clarinet would someday make him a very rich man!

Benny became a virtuoso, which was part of the problem. I really believe he couldn't understand why every musician in his band didn't play at his level. Even in the best bands, there were only four or five musicians who could improvise a good jazz solo. In a Goodman band, tensions were always high. Benny sometimes didn't like the way Gene Krupa played drums, and wasn't shy about telling him. By March of 1938, Gene was gone ( a few years after he left, Benny hired the great black drummer Sid Catlett, but he didn't like his playing either!). The following year, Teddy Wilson, Harry James, and Jess Stacy (along with some lesser-known names) also left. Benny's response to this was to tell singer Martha Tilton that, since everyone else was leaving, she might as well go too!

Goodman, needless to say, was a perfectionist. He practiced constantly, even on the day he died. When introducing the band to a new tune, he would have them play it over and over for an hour or more, until the men got sick of it. He also expected every employee to be as dedicated to his music as he was. This went over like a lead balloon. As one musician said, "Playing with Benny Goodman was just another job I had."

I would be remiss if I wrote about Benny Goodman and failed to mention "The Ray." That was what musicians called the look he gave them when he was less than pleased with the way one of them was playing. One of the stars of the band who was not intimidated by this was trumpeter Ziggy Elman. Goodman had discovered Elman in Atlantic City, playing with a band led by someone named Alex Bartha. Once, when Goodman put "The Ray" on him, Ziggy responded in words like this: "Look, Benny, don't try that stuff on me. I was very happy playing with Alex Bartha. If you want to fire me, go ahead. I'll be glad to go back there." After that, he had no more trouble with Benny Goodman.

I think some people think that because he played so few notes, Count Basie was a mediocre musician. Nothing could be further from the truth. Listen to the recordings he made with Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra in 1932. They show a musician fully in command of his instrument. When Basie formed his own big band and moved to New York, he didn't want his piano competing with all those horns, so, in the words of one musician, "he simplified his style" (although he played it far too infrequently, Basie was also a brilliant organist, having studied under the master, Fats Waller). While Basie, as opposed to the uptight Goodman, was know for the easygoing manner in which he treated his musicians, he fired Lester Young immediately for missing an important recording session. Goodman and Basie did admire each other, however, and you can hear the Count's piano on several Goodman Sextet record dates.

Vincent Bernardo:
I am a retired teacher who started listening to jazz when I was a teenager because my father and uncle both loved the big bands, especially Basie and Goodman. And if you want to know how I got "hooked" on old movies, it's because when I was growing up they were shown every afternoon (and all day on weekends) on the local channels here in New York. One of the shows I remember most fondly was "Million Dollar Movie" on WOR. The show opened with a shot of the Empire State Building and the music to "Gone With The Wind." Most of the movies they showed were from the RKO vault, since that studio owned the station. Every Thanksgiving the station gave thanks by showing "King Kong," although I never could figure out what this movie had to do with the Pilgrims. But I will say this: the one movie never, ever shown on the program was GWTW!