Volume 45, Number 13 · August 13, 1998
Swing King
By Whitney Balliett
Benny Goodman: The Complete RCA Victor Small Group Recordings
RCA Victor/BMG, 3 CDs, $39.98 the set
Charlie Christian
Masters of Jazz/Média 7, 8 CDs, $16.99 each
The Complete Capitol Small Group Recordings of Benny Goodman, 1944-1955
Mosaic, 4 CDs (out of print)
In 1935, the clarinettist and bandleader Benny Goodman, aged just twenty-six, left New York with his fourteen-piece 'swing' band and, traveling in a rag-tag group of cars, headed for the huge Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. It was not an easy trip. There were half a dozen dismal, sparsely attended one-nighters and three weeks at a dance hall in Denver, where the band was forced to play waltzes, tangos, and novelty numbers. On the opening night at the Palomar, the band played ballad numbers in the first set, and there was little response from the dancers. Then one of the musicians said, if they were going to bomb again they might as well do it in style. So Goodman called for his hot, often up-tempo arrangements, many of them by the ingenious black bandleader and arranger Fletcher Henderson, and the kids stopped dancing, clustered around the bandstand, and began roaring. Before the weeks at the Palomar were over, it was clear that Goodman had suddenly made jazz—still a suspect and largely subliminal American folk music, despite the brilliant inventions during the previous decade of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Duke Ellington—into a popular music.
Review, 3176 words
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