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Benny Goodman
Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader known as the “King of Swing”.
From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing big bands in the United States. His concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938, is described by critic Bruce Eder as “the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz’s ‘coming out’ party to the world of ‘respectable’ music.”
UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 01: DENMARK OUT Photo of Charlie CHRISTIAN; playing guitar, c.1940 (Photo by JP Jazz Archive/Redferns)
(Original Caption) 1/29/1938-New York, NY- This sensational scene in the Paramount Theater is duplicated at every performance of Benny Goodman's swing band. The crowd leaves its collective seat at the end of the performance to surround the maestro as he and his band are lowered below floor level on the disappearing platform. So potent is Goodman's swing music that numerous members of the audience shagged and Susie-Q'd in the aisles in defiance of flustered ushers.
Clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman, photographed in 1959, made history as the first musician to perform jazz with an integrated band in Carnegie Hall in 1938.
