Benny Goodman's Ascendancy To King

Benny Goodman was a man who lead a very influential life, he was born on May 30th, 1909 and lived to be 77 years old. He was 1 out of 12 kids in his family and his parents had moved from Russia to get away from anti semitism. His mother never knew english but his father worked as a tailor to make money for their big family. When Benny was 10 years old he got sent to the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue by his father to study music. His had a disposition for the clarinet and he loved every second of it. The first musical he played in he was at the age of 11, and then soon after joined the American Federation of Musicians when he was 14. At that age he made the decision to quit school in order to pursue his music career. His father died a year later and Benny used the money he had

On August 21st, 1935 Benny and his band played at the Palomar Ballroom in LA. That gig was the beginning of Benny’s ascendancy to King and the swing era. Benny was very popular for being racially colorblind, which was hard to find while in the mid 30’s when racial segregation was a big problem. Teddy Wilson who was an African American pianist, was first seen in the Benny Goodman Trio at the Congress Hotel in 1935. The next year Benny added Lionel Hampton to create the Benny Goodman Quartet. Benny’s huge success during the Swing Era is what led Time magazine in 1937 to name him the “King of Swing”. The next year, during the peak of the Swing Era, Benny Goodman’s band, with musicians from Count Basie and Duke Ellington’s bands, reached a big milestone to be the first ever jazz band to play at the esteemed Carnegie Hall in New York. After the concert, the Benny Goodman Band went through a few changes in cast. The swing era came to a close as World War II raged on, and that aided a change in styles. Benny continued to play swing style