Goodman, Benny (1909–1986)

US clarinettist, composer, and band-leader, nicknamed the ‘King of Swing’. He played in various jazz and dance bands from 1921. In 1934 he founded a 12-piece band, which combined the expressive improvisation of black jazz with disciplined precision ensemble playing. He is associated with such numbers as ‘Blue Skies’ and ‘Let's Dance’.

Born in Chicago, he studied classical clarinet with Franz Schoepp of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before beginning a successful freelance solo career in 1921, influenced by the New Orleans style. He introduced jazz to New York's Carnegie Hall in 1938. In the same year he started a parallel classical career, recording the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with the Budapest String Quartet, and commissioning new works from Béla Bartók (including Contrasts, 1938), Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky (Ebony Concerto), Paul Hindemith, and others. He also recorded jazz with a sextet in 1939–41 that included the guitarist Charlie Christian (1916–1942). When swing lost popularity in the 1950s, Goodman took a series of smaller groups on world tours, the highlight of which was a US-government-sponsored visit to Moscow in 1962.