Benny Goodman

Biography

Benny Goodman was one of the twelve children of David Gutman and Dora Grisinsky, family poor of Jewish immigrants. He learns the clarinet as of the 10 years age to the courses from the Kehelah Jacob Synagog , of which he integrates the orchestra into 11 years. Professional at 14 years, it occurs with Chicago and on the boats which sail on the Big lakes imitating at the time the style of the clarinettist Ted Lewis. He helps his family thus financially. It is with the formation of the beater Ben Pollack with it records, for the first time, in 1926. After a stay in California, it is fixed at New York where it occurs in many formations.

In 1934, it creates a Big band which will be one of the most popular orchestras of " the era of the swing ". At the end of 1934, it auditions with " Dansons" , a radiophonic program of BBC and is then made know, initially in the east of the States-Unis.
Among the musicians who will take part, with the passing of years, with this orchestra, one can quote, inter alia, the arrangers Fletcher Henderson, Edgar Sampson, Benny Carter and Eddie Sauter, the trumpet players Bunny Berigan, Harry James, Ziggy Elman, the saxophonists Vido Musso, Bud Freeman and Georgia Auld, the guitarist Charlie Christian, the pianist Jess Stacy, the beaters Gene Krupa and Dave Tough.

Simultaneously with its big band, Benny Goodman directs also small formations (trios, " quartets" , " sextets"). It is for these combos, that it is one of the first white musicians to engage, at one time when a severe racial segregation prevails, black musicians. The first is the pianist Teddy Wilson in 1936. Follow the vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, the guitarist Charlie Christian and the trumpet player Cootie Williams (these the last two musicians form also part of the big band).

January 16th 1938 is the most outstanding date of its musical career, the Carnegie Hall of New York opening its doors to him.

Its career is managed by his/her brother-in-law John H. Hammond. It is thanks to the latter that in 1938, Benny Goodman is the first musician of jazz to be occurred with the Carnegie Hall of New York. He is then crowned " the king off swing " (the king of the swing).

The piece Taking has Chance one Coils is number 1 in the United States in June 1943 three weeks consecutive.

In 1947, Benny Goodman dissolves its big band. It occurs starting from this date primarily as leader of small formations. Even if it does not occupy any more the front of the scene of the jazz, there remains very active. It takes part in many films of which " With song is born" (Howard Hawks, 1948) and " The Benny Goodman story" (Valentine Davies, 1955). Within the framework of " US Farming State Department Exchange Program" , it makes rounds in Asia (1956) and Europe. It is within this framework, that in 1962, accompanied by a big band formed for the occasion, he is the first musician of American jazz to occur in Soviet Union.

He dies of an cardiac arrest in 1986.

The virtuoso of the clarinet

Being based on the arrangements studied for the whole of the orchestra, he was the Master of the solos of improvisation based on a remarkable and fluid technical dexterity, with the precise intonation and the matched vibrato. Its play was strewn with glissandos of the low register to acute and vice versa. The direct catch of a note in the top of the higher octave, particularly delicate exercise, formed part of it.

Achieved musician, Benny Goodman also practiced the classical music, recording, inter alia, the concerto for clarinet of Mozart. Its notoriety enabled him to order parts with type-setters like Béla Bartók (" Contrastes" for clarinet, violin and piano, 1940), Aaron Copland (" Concerto for clarinette" , 1948) or Leonard Bernstein (" Be a prelude to, running away and riffs"). He also played George Gershwin, Darius Milhaud and Brahms, of which, little time before its death, he was exerted to play a sonata.

Discography

Random links: