Benny Goodman (1909-1986) was born in Chicago's toughest neighborhood, The Maxwell Street Ghetto.
His Jewish parents, David and Dora Goodman, left Russia to escape the pogroms (attacks on people of Jewish heritage). They immigrated to America to find a better life. David Goodman had a career as a tailor in Russia but had to do hard labor in Chicago's stockyards and slaughterhouses. Benny was the 9th of the Goodman's 12 children. They were an extremely poor family with hardly enough money to afford rent.

Life in the ghetto was tough.
In the ghetto, the streets were dirty and overcrowded. Street gangs battled each other and there was crime everywhere. His family moved from one apartment to another when rent got too high. Sometimes there was no heat, and food was hard to buy. Benny and his eleven brothers and sisters were often hungry and cold.

Playing music was a way to earn extra money for Benny's family.
David Goodman wanted his sons to help earn extra money for the family by playing music like some other neighborhood kids. He took Benny and his two brothers to join the local synagogue's band. Benny received his first training there. Soon he was able to outplay his brothers and the other students in the band. When the synagogue could no longer afford to sponsor the band, David Goodman took his children to the Hull House, a charity organization, to continue their musical training. His father saw Benny's unstoppable talent and he struggled to pay fifty cents a week so Benny could have private lessons with classical musician, Franz Schoepp. He also played duets with another of Schoepp's students, the black clarinetist Buster Bailey, who later played with Louis Armstrong. David Goodman wanted Benny to have a well-paid future as a musician. Music was a way for Benny to avoid a life of hard labor and poverty.

Benny practiced, practiced, practiced...
Benny practiced his clarinet three to four hours everyday. Self-improvement was a way for him to get out of the ghetto. Throughout his career, he maintained a strict practice schedule. Benny was a perfectionist - - he wanted his music to be flawless.

Then came jazz.
Chicago in the 1920s had an exciting jazz scene. Louis Armstrong performed there with other influential musicians. Their performances inspired Benny to play jazz. During the roaring twenties, if a musician could play jazz and improvise (make up music as he played along) it was easier to get jobs playing at parties and dance halls. Benny knew his instrument so well -- he was able to start playing jazz to earn money.

At 14, Benny began to play as a professional musician.
Benny used to imitate a comedian named Ted Lewis, who also played clarinet and had a very popular band. This led to jobs playing in dance bands. He started earning fifteen dollars a night -- more than his father earned in a week. The money helped Benny support his family. Tragically, Benny's father died just as Benny started to make a name for himself, and never knew of his son's great success.

Benny becomes the King of Swing.
At the age of sixteen, Benny joined Ben Pollack's orchestra and traveled with them to California. Later, he went with them to New York, where Benny eventually settled. He moved his whole family from Chicago and supported them during the Depression. After four years, he left Pollack to play on the radio and in recording studios with many different bands. Meanwhile, a new jazz style began to emerge as mainly African American bandleaders transformed the big band style of the 1920s into swing, a lively, uptempo jazz style. He formed his own swing band and went on tour.

Benny captures the attention of the nation.
In August of 1935, Benny and his orchestra began a series of performances at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. This was the turning point in Benny's career. Thousands of enthusiastic, teenage fans flocked to hear Benny and his orchestra perform. Never before had Benny or swing music received that kind of attention from audiences. The media nicknamed him "the King of Swing." In 1937, Benny went on to perform at the Paramount Theatre in New York where an audience of thousands of frenzied teenagers danced in the aisles and screamed wildly for the band. With Benny's influence, swing music had become a national obsession.

As a bandleader Benny wanted the best musicians, race didn't matter.
He did something very important when he hired pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton (both of whom had played with Louis Armstrong) to join his band. It was the first time black and white musicians played together in a famous group. In 1938, Benny's band played at Carnegie Hall with many great black musicians, and he continued to play music until his death in 1986.

Photo courtesy of Frank Driggs