This Day in Cultural History

January 16, 1938 – For one night “The King of Swing,” Benny Goodman, captured the holy temple of classical music, New York’s Carnegie Hall, for the jazz world, bringing to the form unparalleled recognition and respectability.

In a way, it was only natural that Goodman should be an ambassador for the form, because he was used to breaking down barriers. One of 12 children born to Russian immigrants, the Chicago native had, by the time he was 30, vaulted to the top of one of the few art forms that were distinctively American, jazz.

Taught for two years by the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp but soon falling under the influence of New Orleans jazzmen like King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, Goodman had already, by the time of the Carnegie Hall appearance, become the first prominent jazz musician to perform the classical repertory. In 1936, he played publicly with two African-American musicians, pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton, then hired them for his band, breaking the jazz color line separating white from black.

Orchestrated by entertainment impresario Sol Hurok, the Carnegie Hall concert sold out weeks in advance. The 28-year-old Goodman was tentative at first, using the first half hour to highlight guest soloists from the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras. His 13 tuxedo-clad sidemen (and one sidewoman) may also have been nervous, with trumpeter Harry James later confessing to feeling “like a whore at church.” But Goodman gained momentum when he came out with his “small group,” including Wilson and Hampton. (Indeed, notes critic Will Friedwald, their appearance might have marked the first instance when a Carnegie Hall audience saw black and white musicians playing side by side.)

After intermission, Goodman’s big band finally showed what the dance-crazy kids at New York's Paramount had been screaming about a couple of years before. Rousing renditions of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon" and "Swingtime in the Rockies" built the audience’s enthusiasm until late in the show, when Goodman unfurled his piece de resistance: the orchestra’s barn-barning signature tune, “Sing, Sing, Sing.”

Goodman, drummer Gene Krupa, and trumpeter Harry James took rousing solo turns before Goodman turned the spotlight over to pianist Jess Stacy, who had never before been featured on this particular song. Stacy’s two-minute turn, evolving from steamboat stride to impressionist chords that reflected his interest in Ravel and Debussy, had audience members on the edge of their seats, wondering what could possibly come next – until Krupa and the rest of the band kicked in for the conclusion that left the capacity crowd hoarse.

Demanding of himself, Goodman was equally so with his band, insisting on precise arrangements and playing. In interview he gave critic Gary Giddins late in his career, Goodman – whose nickname “The Professor” might owe as much to his cerebral musicianship as to his owlish appearance – summed up the paradox at the heart of his career: “Listening to music is emotional. Sometimes you like something a lot, and another time you hate it. The whole goddamn thing about jazz is emotional. I like to feel the excitement. If it doesn’t come out as a wide endeavor – wild with restraint – it doesn’t have it.”

Beloved by the public throughout his 40-year career, Goodman was respected by fellow musicians for his accomplished playing but also universally scorned for displaying what Giddins called “his legendary cheapness, absentmindedness, mandarin discipline, rudeness to musicians, and various eccentricities.”

Even his liberal outlook on race was marked by his curmudgeonly nature. His later pianist-arranged Mel Powell remembered his boss this way to jazz critic Dan Morgenstern: “Benny was one of the very, very few white people I’ve known who had not a fiber of racism in him. He was absolutely, authentically color blind…One of the real giveaways to his outlook was that he could be as rude to a black man as to a white man. He did not get patronizing or suddenly gentle. Not at all. And I always found that admirable.”

Even family members were not exempt: a PBS documentary on his life included in an interview with one of his daughters, who recalled that when she was considering a career in music, he told her curtly she did not have the talent.

No matter how much of a martinet he might have been offstage, Goodman secured a distinct place for himself and the jazz world with his Carnegie Hall appearance. Its importance – and Goodman’s unique crossover appeal – was underscored on the 50th anniversary of the concert, when the great jazzman’s daughter, Rachel Goodman Edelson, handed one of her late father’s clarinets to Isaac Stern on stage as the first donation to a future museum at Carnegie Hall (later called the Rose Museum).