Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are tuning
our frequency to the 1930s. But I want to be
clear right off the bat. We aren't just talking
about music today. We're not just talking about,
you know, catchy tunes or people dancing the
Lindy Hop. No, not at all. We are talking about...
a cultural explosion. It really was a seismic
shift. I mean, if you look at the source material,
the biographies, the discographies, all the historical
accounts, you realize that what happened in 1935
wasn't just a new musical trend. No. It was a
complete restructuring of American pop culture.
We're talking about the king of swing, Benny
Goodman. Now, if you're like me, when you hear
that name, you might picture this polite sort
of bespectacled guy in a tuxedo playing the clarinet.
Right, the classic image. Maybe he looks like
a math teacher or, I don't know, an accountant.
And technically you're correct. That is what
he looked like. But you are missing the wild,
complicated, and frankly, revolutionary story
that was going on underneath that tuxedo. Exactly.
We're looking at a pivotal force who changed
how America listened, how America danced, and...
Maybe most importantly, how America started to
deal with race in the public sphere. He was such
an unlikely hero for a revolution. A completely
unlikely hero. It's a massive story. We're going
to unpack how. A poor immigrant kid from the
absolute slums of Chicago became this global
superstar. Right. And we're going to look at
how a weird quirk of time zones, I mean, literally
just the mechanics of the clock, launched the
entire swing era. And we have to talk about the
cost of that success. Because for all the joy
you hear in that music, Goodman was known for
this paradoxical personality. He was a perfectionist
to the point of obsession. Right. Famous for
something called The Ray, which absolutely terrified
his musicians. Oh, The Ray. I've read about this
and it sounds like actual psychological warfare.
We are definitely getting into that. We have
to. So buckle up. We're diving deep into the
life, the music, and the very complicated legacy
of Benny Goodman. Let's start at the very beginning.
Because the rags to riches element here isn't
just some cliche. It's essential to understanding
his drive. I agree. You cannot understand Benny
Goodman without understanding the sheer desperation
of his childhood. Right. So let's set the scene.
Benny Goodman was born in 1909 in Chicago. He
wasn't just from a humble background. He was
the ninth of 12 children. 12 children. Just think
about that number. And his parents, David and
Dora, were Jewish immigrants from the Russian
Empire, specifically from Warsaw and Kaunas.
And they came to the U .S. with almost nothing.
Absolutely nothing. They were escaping persecution,
just looking for any kind of foothold they could
get. And they ended up in the Maxwell Street
neighborhood. Now, for anyone who isn't familiar
with, you know, early 20th century Chicago, paint
a picture for us. What did Maxwell Street look
like? It was known as the ghetto. It was an overcrowded
slum right near the railroad yards and the factories.
So loud. Incredibly loud. Imagine the smell of
the stockyards, that sort of metallic, bloody
scent of the slaughterhouses just hanging over
the neighborhood. It was smoky. It was packed
with immigrants, German, Irish, Italian, Polish,
Jewish, all crammed into these tiny tenements.
So no privacy, no money, and just constant noise.
Exactly. The sources described their apartment
as just bursting at the seams. And money was
a constant crushing problem. Yeah. There were
days when there wasn't enough heat, days when
food was really scarce. But here's what's fascinating
to me. In the middle of all that grinding poverty,
you have David Goodman, the father. The father
seems like the central figure in this whole early
chapter. He really is. He was a tailor, you know,
working endlessly in sweatshops, shoveling snow,
doing absolutely whatever he could to make ends
meet. Right. But he had this vision for his children.
He saw the poverty around him, the gangs, the
dead end labor jobs, and he wanted a way out
for his kids. And he decided music was the ticket.
He decided music was the vehicle. Which is interesting,
right? Yeah, because today we think of music
as such a risky career. It's like, don't become
a musician, become a doctor or a lawyer. Exactly.
But for David Goodman, music was a trade. It
was a skilled labor that paid a lot better than
digging ditches. Precisely. He used to take the
kids to these free band concerts in Douglas Park
on Sundays. And that was Benny's first exposure
to live professional performance. Wow. You have
to imagine, for a little kid living in a gray,
dirty tenement, seeing these men in crisp uniforms
playing these shiny brass instruments. It must
have looked like they were from another planet.
It must have looked like dignity. Like a way
out. So in 1919, when Benny is 10 years old,
the father hears about an opportunity. He hears
about free music classes at the Kehila Jacob
Synagogue. And he jumps on it. He doesn't hesitate
for a second. He marches Benny and two of his
older brothers, Harry and Freddie, right down
to the synagogue to enroll. And here is where
fate just steps right in. This is one of those
classic sliding doors moments in history. It
really is. If this had gone just slightly differently,
the entire sound of the 1930s would have changed.
It's a great story. So picture the scene. It's
1919. The synagogue basement is probably, you
know, chaotic, full of shouting kids and tired
volunteers. Right. And they open up these crates
of donated used instruments. This isn't some
carefully curated music school. It's basically
a supply dump. It's just a scramble for whatever's
in the box. Essentially. And the distribution
was based on one simple metric, physical size.
How big you were. That's it. Harry, the biggest
brother, he gets the tuba. Because he's the only
one strong enough to lift it. Right. Freddie,
the middle brother, he gets the trumpet. And
then there's Benny. He's 10. He's the youngest
and he was small for his age, probably underfed,
you know? Yeah. A tuba would have literally crushed
him. So what's left in the box for the little
guy? The clarinet. They handed him the clarinet
because it was the only thing small enough for
him to hold. Just think about that. I mean, if
Benny Goodman had been a growth spurt kid, if
he'd been six inches taller. He becomes a tuba
player. He's a tuba player. And jazz history
is completely rewritten. Completely. The tuba
is the anchor of the band, right? It's the baseline.
It goes oompa, oompa. But the clarinet. The clarinet
is a fluid, agile instrument. It's like a voice.
It's akin to the violin or the human voice. It
can scream, it can whisper, it can run up and
down scales at lightning speed. That instrument
allowed Benny to develop a kind of virtuosity
that a tuba simply would not have permitted.
So he gets this clarinet, and it turns out the
kid is an absolute prodigy. A virtuoso from the
jump. He took to it immediately. He started taking
lessons from Franz Schupp, who was a classically
trained clarinetist with the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra. So this is a key detail. A very key
detail. Benny wasn't just learning jazz by ear.
He was learning strict classical technique right
from the beginning. He also joined the band at
Hull House. Hull House is legendary in Chicago
history. It was a settlement house for immigrants,
right? It was a lifeline. And joining that band
gave him the chance to spend two weeks at a summer
camp. The sources say this was literally his
only escape from the slums. For two weeks a year,
he saw trees, he breathed fresh air, and he realized
right then that music was his ticket out of the
ghetto. And he wasn't just playing for fun. He
got his union card at 13. 13 years old. Can you
imagine? He was playing on excursion boats on
Lake Michigan, contributing to the family income.
He was a professional musician while he was still
in short pants. He was bringing home money that
put food on the table for 12 other people. That
is a heavy, heavy burden for a 13 -year -old.
Immense. But then tragedy strikes. And this,
I think, is the moment that really cemented his
relentless, almost terrifying drive. It's the
pivotal trauma of his life. He was 17 years old.
His career is just starting to take off. He's
playing with Ben Pollack's orchestra, making
actual recordings. He's making it. He is actually
making it. And his father, David Goodman, the
man who dragged them to the synagogue, the man
who dreamed this whole thing up for them. Yeah.
He steps off a streetcar and is hit and killed
by a passing car. It's just devastating. Benny
later called it the saddest thing that ever happened
in our family. But if we connect this to the
bigger picture of his psyche. His personality.
You have to realize his father never saw him
become a star. He never saw the dream come true.
He died just before the breakthrough. And that
has to leave a permanent mark. A huge scar. It
likely instilled this idea in him that music
wasn't just a hobby or an art form. It was survival.
It was life or death. Right. If Benny stopped
practicing, if he stopped being the absolute
best, the family might starve. They might end
up right back in Maxwell Street. Failure was
just not an option. So he carries this weight
with him. He moves to New York City. He's doing
session work, playing on the radio, playing in
Broadway pits. He's making a good living, especially
during the Depression, which is saying something.
It really is. He's a first -call musician. If
you needed a clarinet solo for a recording, you
called Benny. But he wanted more. He wanted his
own band. And this brings us to the mid -30s
and the birth of the swing era. Now, before we
get to the big explosion at the Palomar, we need
to explain something technical because Swing
wasn't just a vibe, you know. Right. It's not
just a feeling. It was a specific musical architecture.
Benny Goodman didn't invent it, but you could
argue he perfected it. And more importantly,
he sold it to America. Right. And to understand
this, we have to talk about Fletcher Henderson.
OK, so Goodman forms his band. And in 1934, he
gets this big radio gig called Let's Dance. He
needs music, a lot of it. And he turns to Fletcher
Henderson. Who was he? Fletcher Henderson was
a brilliant African -American band leader and
arranger. He had an orchestra that played this
incredible, driving, powerful music. But it was
the Great Depression. The Depression just decimated
the record industry and the whole touring circuit.
So Henderson was deep in debt and he had to disband
his orchestra. So Goodman, who has this budget
from the radio show. He hires Henderson to write
arrangements for his band. Goodman even hired
Henderson's own band members to come teach his
musicians how to play that style properly. He
basically bought the book of the Henderson band.
But what made those arrangements so special?
What is the swing formula? It's all about call
and response. So before this, a lot of jazz was
collective improvisation. You know, everyone
playing around the melody at once, like in the
New Orleans style. Kind of a musical chaos. A
beautiful chaos. Right. But chaos. Henderson
organized it. He treated the brass section, the
trumpets and trombones, as one voice. Okay. And
he treated the reed section, the saxophones and
clarinets, as another voice. So they're almost
like two choirs talking to each other. Exactly.
The brass shouts a riff. And the saxophones answer
back. They trade these phrases back and forth
over a steady four on the floor rhythm. It creates
this tension. This incredible tension and release
that just makes you want to move. It's an engine.
And when Goodman's band, which was drilled to
absolute perfection, played these Henderson charts,
it was like a high performance machine. So he
has the band. He has the music. Things are looking
up. He's on the radio show Let's Dance playing
this hot new music late at night. But then. But
then the sponsor pulls out. There's a strike
at Nabisco. The cookie company. The cookie company.
The show is canceled. And suddenly, Goodman has
this very expensive band and no gig. So his agents
book a cross -country tour to try and keep them
afloat. And frankly, we have to stress this.
The tour was an absolute disaster. It was a catastrophe.
You have to remember, in 1935, the popular music
in the Midwest and the East was what they called
sweet music. Like Guy Lombardo. Exactly. Polite,
melodic, very gentle dance music. It was pure
escapism. People wanted to be soothed during
the Depression. And here comes Benny Goodman
playing this aggressive, loud, hot jazz. And
people hated it. They hated it. They literally
demanded their money back. In Denver, the ballroom
manager told them to stop playing that noise
or he'd fire them right there on the spot. Wow.
By the time they reached Pismo Beach, California,
the band was completely demoralized. They were
broke. They thought the tour was the end of the
road. Imagine the mood on that bus. They're driving
across the desert thinking, while we tried, guess
it's back to session work in New York. And they
arrive in Los Angeles on August 21st, 1935. The
Palomar Ballroom. This is the day. This is the
D -Day of the swing era. They set up their instruments.
They are exhausted. They are expecting another
hostile crowd who just wants to hear waltzes.
So Benny, being cautious, he starts the first
set with the sweet stuff, the safe stock arrangements.
He's just trying to play it safe, not get booed
off the stage again. And the reaction from the
crowd? Silence. Total indifference. The crowd
is just kind of milling around, not dancing.
It's looking like another massive failure. And
then the drummer, Gene Krupa, who is a legend
in his own right, he looks over at Benny and
he says something that should be on a T -shirt.
He says, if we're going to die, Benny, let's
die playing our own thing. That is the moment.
I mean, the courage to fail on your own terms.
Yeah. Goodman just nods. He tells the band to
pull out the Fletcher Henderson charts. The real
stuff. Yeah. Kicks off King Porter stomp. What
happens? Bedlam. Absolute bedlam. The crowd rushes
the bandstand. They're cheering, screaming, dancing
like they've lost their minds. The band must
have been in shock. They were shocked. They're
looking at each other like, where do these people
come from? Okay, so why? Why did Los Angeles
lose its mind when Denver hated it? This is my
favorite part of the story. It's the time zone
miracle. Let's unpack this because it's such
a weird, specific, technological quirk of history.
So remember the radio show Let's Dance? It was
broadcast live from New York City. Goodman's
segment, the hot segment with the Henderson charts,
it aired late. Right. It was on around midnight
or maybe even 1 a .m. Eastern time. So in New
York, only the insomniacs and the night owls
are hearing it. Right. But think about the time
zones. Midnight in New York. Is 9 p .m. in California.
It's prime time. That's exactly when teenagers
are listening to the radio while they're getting
ready to go out for the night. That is incredible.
I've never heard that before. So the kids in
California had been listening to Benny Goodman's
hot sets for months while doing their homework
or hanging out with friends. They knew the arrangements.
They knew the solos. They had been waiting for
him to arrive. The geography of the clock created
a fan base he didn't even know existed. He had
no idea. And it highlights just how thin the
line is between failure and legend. I mean, if
that radio show had been an hour later or if
the tour had stopped in Utah instead of L .A.
Swing might not have happened. Yeah. At least
not like that. It's very likely. But it did happen.
The media reported the hysteria at the Palomar.
And overnight, Benny Goodman was crowned the
king of swing. So now he has the crown. He has
the power. And this is where the story shifts
from just musical history to social history.
Because once he was on top, he started doing
things that simply were not done. We need to
talk about the color line. We absolutely do.
And we need to be really blunt about the context
here. In the 1930s, the music industry was strictly
segregated. No question. Black and white musicians
might jam together in private, after hours in
some back room. But on stage? In public, absolutely
not. It was illegal in some states. And it was
career suicide in others. But Goodman cared about
one thing and one thing only. The sound. The
sound. He was obsessed with the sound. He didn't
care who made it. He met Teddy Wilson, this elegant,
brilliant African -American pianist. And Goodman
wanted that sound in his band. So he hires him,
just like that. Well, not for the big band at
first. He creates the Benny Goodman Trio. It
was him. Gene Krupa on drums and Teddy Wilson
on piano. And then he adds Lionel Hampton. On
vibraphone for the quartet. And later in 1939,
he adds the great Charlie Christian on electric
guitar. We have to pause on the significance
of this. This is 1935, 1936. This is more than
a decade before Jackie Robinson broke the color
line in baseball. It's massive. And it wasn't
easy. They couldn't travel together comfortably.
When the band toured the South, Teddy Wilson
and Lionel Hampton. often couldn't stay in the
same hotels as the white members. No. They couldn't
eat in the same restaurants. They'd have to find
boarding houses in black neighborhoods. So was
Goodman doing this because he was a civil rights
activist? Was he trying to make some big political
statement? The evidence suggests no, not really.
He wasn't a marcher. He wasn't giving speeches
about equality. He was a pragmatist. He wanted
the best musicians on earth. And it just so happened
that some of the best were black. But he was
fiercely protective of them. There's a story
about a clarinet threat that I love. It's a classic
Goodman story. They were playing a gig, and someone,
maybe a promoter, maybe an echoer in the crowd,
asked Goodman why he was playing with that N
-word, referring to Teddy Wilson. A horrible,
racist confrontation. And Goodman didn't try
to reason with him. He didn't try to explain.
He just looked the guy dead in the eye and said,
if you say that again to me, I'll take a clarinet
and bust you across your head with it. Simple.
Direct. And violent if necessary. Exactly. Lionel
Hampton said later that what Goodwin did made
it possible for black people to get chances in
other fields. By putting a mixed band on stage
at the height of his fame, he normalized the
image of black and white excellence working together.
He forced the audience to listen to the music,
not look at the skin color. He did. Speaking
of excellence, we have to tell the Charlie Christian
story. Because if the Palomar is sort of the
action movie part of the story, this is the buddy
comedy part. It really is. Yeah. So John Hammond,
who was this wealthy producer, a talent scout,
and basically the architect of Goodman's career,
he discovers this guitarist in Oklahoma named
Charlie Christian. No, Charlie Christian is playing
an electric guitar. 1939, that's a... weird instrument.
It was a total novelty. It looked like a science
experiment. A guitar with a cable plugged into
a box. Benny Goodman hated it. He hated it. He
thought it was a gadget, not a serious instrument.
Plus, Charlie Christian shows up wearing a purple
shirt and yellow shoes. Very flashy. And Benny,
who was always in this perfectly tailored suit,
he was just appalled. He refused to even audition
him. So Hammond has to trick him. He has to set
up an ambush. The band is playing a dinner set
at a posh restaurant in Beverly Hills. Hammond
sneaks Charlie Christian onto the stage during
the break. No way. Yes. Goodman comes back from
dinner. He walks onto the bandstand, and he sees
this kid in the purple shirt sitting there with
his electric guitar amp. Benny must have been
absolutely furious. He was so annoyed. He wanted
to embarrass the kid, get him off the stage as
fast as possible. So he calls a tune called Rose
Room. Okay. Now, Rose Room is a tricky, sophisticated
piece. Benny assumed this country kid from Oklahoma
wouldn't know the chord changes. Let's see what
we've got, kid. A little test. A test. He was
supposed to fail. They kick it off. And Charlie
Christian doesn't just know it. He owns it. He
starts soloing. And the sound coming out of that
amplifier was unlike anything anyone had ever
heard before. What was it like? It was horn -like.
It was sustaining, fluid. It was like a saxophone
made of electricity. And Benny, what was his
reaction? Benny stopped trying to embarrass him
and he just started listening. Then he started
playing back. They locked in. Right. They played
that one song, Roseroom, for 45 minutes straight.
45 minutes on one song. Just trading solos back
and forth. The waiters were stopping to watch.
The audience was mesmerized. And in that one
session, the electric guitar went from being
a novelty gadget to being a lead instrument in
jazz. It just shows that for Goodman, the music
always won. If you could play, you were in, period.
True. And this is the big pivot, being... in
the band, was not a vacation. No. This brings
us to the paradox of Benny Goodman. We've talked
about the hero. Now we have to talk about the
villain. The dark side of perfection? Goodman
was a demanding, sometimes tyrannical taskmaster.
He expected absolute, note -perfect flawlessness.
And when he didn't get it, or even when he just
thought he didn't get it, he had a weapon. The
ray. The ray. Okay, so the ray. Was this just
him giving someone a dirty look? Or was it something
more? I want you to imagine you're on stage.
You're a trumpet player. You're in the middle
of a solo. And suddenly, Betty Goodman stops
playing. He turns to you. He looks over the top
of his rimless glasses. And he just stares. So
silence. Total silence. No screaming. No feedback.
Just this cold, expressionless, unblinking stare
that musicians said seemed to look right through
you. That sounds terrifying. It made seasoned
pros feel like clumsy children. I have to push
back a little here, though. I mean, we hear about
tough bosses all the time. Steve Jobs, James
Cameron. Was the Ray really that bad or are we
just talking about sensitive artists? It's a
fair question. Yeah. But you have to understand
the psychological isolation of it. He would do
this in front of thousands of people in the middle
of a show. So it's public. It's public humiliation.
And if he was really mad, he would physically
move you. He would point to a musician and tell
them to move their chair to the back of the stage
away from the microphone, essentially erasing
them from the performance. Wow, that's cold.
It is. Helen Forrest, who was one of the greatest
vocalists of the entire era, sang with him for
about 20 months. She later said it felt like
20 years. She called it a life sentence. That's
a strong statement. She famously said, Benny
looks at you, but he doesn't see you. He looks
through you. He just treated them like components
of a machine. Exactly. If a valve on an engine
is sticky, you replace it. You don't ask the
valve how its day was. That was Benny. But then
you have these weird contradictions. The sources
mention his secret philanthropy. Yes. While he
was freezing people out on stage with the ray,
he was quietly writing checks to put people through
college. He paid for medical bills. But he kept
it a total secret. Why hide the kindness? It
doesn't make sense. He was deeply cynical. He
said, if they knew about it, everyone would come
to me with their hand out. So he built this wall
of ice around himself to protect his focus and
his wallet. So he was generous with his money,
but incredibly miserly with his emotions. Perfectly
put. It's a really complex psychological profile,
but that relentless, cold perfectionism did lead
to the absolute summit of his career. We have
to talk about Carnegie Hall. January 16th, 1938.
If the Palomar was the birth of swing, Carnegie
Hall was its coronation. For our listeners, we
need to contextualize this. Jazz in 1938 was
still seen by the establishment as whorehouse
music. That's what they called it. It was for
nightclubs, for dancing, for drinking. Carnegie
Hall was a temple. It was for Beethoven, Bach,
Mozart. You didn't play drums at Carnegie Hall.
Exactly. It was a massive, massive gamble. Goodman
was terrified. He actually tried to cancel the
show beforehand. Really? Why? He thought nobody
would come or that the critics would laugh them
out of the building. But the show sold out. Sold
out instantly. And the concert itself, I mean,
if you listen to the recording, it's electric.
They started out a little stiff, a little nervous.
But as the night went on, the energy just built
and built. And it culminates in the final number.
Sing, sing, sing. Oh, that song. Even if you
don't think you know it, you know it. The Tom
Toms. Boom, boom, boom, boom. It's the anthem
of the era. It is. Yeah. And at Carnegie Hall,
they just stretched it out. Gene Krupa played
these tribal thunderous drum solos. And Jess
Stacy played this unexpected, delicate, almost
impressionistic piano solo right in the middle
of all the chaos. Yeah. The audience was practically
levitating. It legitimized jazz overnight. It
said, this is art. With a capital A. Precisely.
After that night, you couldn't just dismiss Swing
as a fad for teenagers anymore. It was American
classical music. And there's a great postscript
to this concert because for years people talked
about it, but almost nobody could actually hear
it. That's right. The concert was recorded on
acetate discs. These are metal discs coated in
lacquer, very fragile, but they were just for
archival purposes. Benny took them home and apparently
just... forgot about them. Imagine forgetting
the master tapes of the most famous jazz concert
in history. It's wild. But fast forward to 1950.
Goodman is moving out of an apartment, or his
sister -in -law finds them. The story varies
a little, but essentially they were found in
a closet. Just sitting in a closet for over a
decade. Sitting in a closet, gathering dust.
You listen to them, realize the quality is surprisingly
good, and they were released as an LP. the famous
1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert. And it was a
huge hit. It became the first double album in
history and a massive bestseller. It basically
resurrected his career in the 50s. Talk about
finding a winning lottery ticket in your old
coat pocket. Unbelievable. But time moves on.
The swing era didn't last forever. World War
II happened. The economy changed. Musical taste
shifted. In the 40s, we get bebop. Right. Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, fast, frantic, harmonically
complex. So how did the king of swing handle
being, well, dethroned? Not well. He is the king,
and suddenly these young guys were changing all
the rules of the kingdom. He tried to adapt.
He actually hired some bop musicians for a while.
I should get it. He even said he liked the loniest
monk. Really? Monk is so abstract and angular.
He was, but Benny said, I like the way he played.
He's got a sense of humor. But generally, Benny
struggled. He couldn't get the feel of bebop.
He eventually rejected it, saying the musicians
didn't know their scales. The classic old man
yelling at cloud moment. It really was. So he
retreated to what he knew. But, and this is where
his obsession comes back in a fascinating way,
he didn't just rest on his laurels. In 1949,
he decided to completely reinvent himself as
a classical clarinetist. The classical overhaul.
This part of the story actually makes me cringe
physically. It is visceral. So Benny starts studying
with Reginald Kell, a famous British classical
clarinetist. And Kell tells him, Benny, your
whole technique is wrong. You're using the wrong
embouchure. An embouchure is how you put your
mouth on the instrument, for those who don't
know. Right. Benny played with his teeth resting
on the top of the mouthpiece. It's a very stable
way to play, good for loud, biting jazz sounds.
Kell played with what's called a double -lip
embouchure. covering both your top and bottom
teeth with your lips. It creates a darker, mellower
sound, but it's much, much harder to control.
So the most famous clarinet player in the world
has to basically relearn how to play? Kel told
him, if you want to do this, you have to start
from scratch. And Benny had 30 years of calluses
on his fingers from playing. Of course. Kel said,
those have to go. Oh, no, don't tell me. Benny
Goodman, the king of swing, had his finger calluses
surgically or chemically removed. He stripped
his hands raw so he could develop the sensitivity
of a beginner again. That is horrific and unbelievably
impressive at the same time. It illustrates the
extreme lengths he would go to for musical mastery.
He spent months just practicing open tones and
scales, sounding like a first -year student,
just to master this new technique. And did he
do it? He did. He commissioned works from major
composers like Aaron Copland and Bill Bartok.
He became a respected classical soloist. It just
proves that the ray wasn't only for other people.
He turned that same harsh, unforgiving light
on himself. He was always his own harshest critic.
So let's look at the later years. The world has
changed completely. It's the Cold War now. And
surprisingly, Benny Goodman becomes a kind of
weapon in the Cold War. He does. The State Department
decides to send the Benny Goodman Orchestra to
the Soviet Union in 1962. Wow. And this is right
after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The world is
terrified of nuclear war. So they send a jazz
band to Moscow to smooth things over. It was
a cultural exchange. The idea was to show the
Soviets the freedom and the energy and the joy
of American culture. And the Russian people loved
it. They were starved for American jazz. They
treated him like a god. But the tour itself,
behind the scenes. A total nightmare. The bassist,
Bill Crow, wrote a book about it called To Russia
Without Love. That is a great title. A great
title. It suggests that Goodman was as miserable
and difficult as ever. He was old. He was in
pain. And he was fighting with the younger, more
modern musicians in his band, trying to make
them play like it was still 1938. So even as
a diplomat, he couldn't turn off the perfectionism.
Never. And he kept playing right up to the end,
didn't he? He practiced almost every single day
of his life. In 1986, he was 77 years old. He
was still working on charts, still practicing.
He died of a heart attack while taking a nap
on his couch in New York. His clarinet was right
there nearby. He went out as a working musician.
Absolutely. And we should mention, he was married
to Alice Hammond, who was John Hammond's sister.
His producer, the guy who found Charlie Christian.
Right. And despite the fact that he and John
Hammond fought constantly, I mean, Hammond actually
quit Columbia Records because he couldn't stand
working with Benny anymore. Benny and Alice had
a long, stable marriage. It was... maybe the
one area of his life that wasn't chaotic. So
when we look back at this massive life, from
being the ninth child in a Chicago slum, learning
clarinet because he was too small for the tuba,
to the Palomar Ballroom, to creating the first
integrated band, to Carnegie Hall, what's the
final headline? The headline is that Benny Goodman
represents the collision of immense, God -given
talent with a very difficult... very human personality.
He changed the racial landscape of America, not
through speeches or marches, but through an uncompromising,
relentless demand for the best sound. He proved
that excellence has no color. Exactly. And he
took dance music. Pop music, essentially. And
he forced the world to recognize it as high art.
He built the bridge between the dance hall and
the symphony hall. It's a heck of a legacy. It
really is. So I'm going to leave you with a thought
to mull over. We talked about the ray, that intolerant,
scary perfectionism. And we talked about how
he changed the world. So ask yourself this. Would
the swing era even have happened without that
obsession? Is the ray that intolerance for mediocrity?
Is that sometimes the necessary price we pay
for changing the world? That really is the question,
isn't it? Thanks for joining us on this deep
dive into the king of swing. We'll see you next
time.