BENNY GOODMAN, KING OF SWING, IS DEAD BENNY GOODMAN, KING OF SWING, IS DEAD By JOHN S. WILSON Benny Goodman, the King of Swing whose clarinet led a generation of music fans into the Big Band era in the 1930's, died yesterday afternoon at his Manhattan apartment, apparently of a heart attack. He was 77 years old. The death of the man who brought jazz to Carnegie Hall and enthralled millions with renditions of ''Sweet Georgia Brown'' and ''Stompin' at the Savoy'' brought expressions of grief and loss from his colleagues. Lionel Hampton, the vibraphonist, recalled that Mr. Goodman was the first major music figure to put black and white musicians together on stage in the 1930's. ''The most important thing that Benny Goodman did,'' he said, ''was to put Teddy Wilson and me in the quartet. It was instant integration. Black people didn't mix with whites then. Benny introduced us as Mr. Lionel Hampton and Mr. Teddy Wilson. He opened the door for Jackie Robinson.

He gave music character and style.'' Apple Cheeks and Horn-Rims The tall, apple-cheeked bandleader with the horn-rimmed glasses had had a pacemaker implanted in 1984, but he had been active and about town in recent months, and had appeared to be in good health yesterday morning, according to Lloyd Rauch, his personal assistant. Mr. Goodman apparently died while taking a nap on a guest-room couch in his apartment at 200 East 66th Street. The body was found by a housekeeper, Anna Lekander, Mr. Rauch said. Mr. Goodman became the King of Swing the night of Aug. 21, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood. In the following years, he drew throngs to nightclubs and theaters and introduced jazz to Carnegie Hall, toured the world as a representative of a distinctive American culture, was instrumental in breaking the barrier that had kept white and black musical groups separate and developed a band that was a training ground for many other band leaders, including Harry James, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. Last month, Mr.

Goodman was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree at Columbia University's commencement ceremonies, the latest in a long list of honors that included lifetime achievement awards at the Grammy show in February and from the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1982. But when he arrived at the Palomar in the summer of 1935 with a 14-piece band that he had formed a year before, there was no aura of success around Mr. Goodman. He was, in fact, so discouraged that he was prepared to give up his band and return to freelancing. His career as a band leader had been discouraging. His orchestra had been dismissed from the only two engagements it had had in New York and, after completing a 26-week contract on a network radio program, it had set out on a cross-country trek from New York to California. The reaction to Mr. Goodman's repertory of jazz-based arrangements ranged from bewilderment to antipathy. ''I thought we'd finish the engagement in California and take the train back to New York and that would be it,'' he recalled many years later.

''I'd just be a clarinetist again.'' He Might Fail, But on His Own Terms He had tried to adapt to what he had been told the audiences wanted - pop tunes and waltzes. But on this night at the Palomar, starting what he thought would be the band's last engagement, Mr. Goodman decided that if he were going to fail, he would fail on his own terms. He brought out some of his favorite arrangements - by Fletcher Henderson of ''Sugar Foot Stomp,'' ''Blue Skies,'' ''Sometimes I'm Happy'' and ''King Porter Stomp'' - which had been his reason for recruiting a band that included such jazz specialists as the trumpeter Bunny Berrigan, the pianist Jess Stacy and the drummer Gene Krupa. As he beat out the tempo for ''Sugar Foot Stomp,'' the band dug into the Henderson arrangement. Then Mr. Berrigan rose up in the trumpet section, playing a crackling solo. As the sound of his horn exploded across the ballroom, a responsive roar went up from the listeners and they surged around the bandstand, cheering. Mr. Goodman looked around in amazement.

He was stunned by the sudden change but, he said later, that roar ''was one of the sweetest sounds I ever heard in my life.'' This stunning reversal in audience acceptance in Hollywood has been attributed to two factors. Although the ''Let's Dance'' program was on the air for only three hours, the bands actually played for five hours because, in those pretape days, the program had to be played a second time for the West Coast. By the time young listeners in California heard the Goodman band, it was warmed up and bringing out its best arrangements. Calfiornia was also developing a new type of radio entertainer, the disk jockey. The first celebrity disk jockey was Al Jarvis in Los Angeles, who had a program of recordings called ''The Make Believe Ballroom'' (a title later used in New York by Martin Block). Mr. Jarvis had been plugging the Goodman band's records and, when the band reached the Palomar, the audience, thanks to Mr. Jarvis, knew and was anxious to hear his choice Henderson arrangements.

The crowd's roar would follow him for years at precedent-setting events not only during the swing era, which lasted into the mid-1940's, but also decades later when, in the 60's, he toured the Soviet Union with his band. He heard that same sound at the ''Paramount riot,'' in March 1937, when he played at the Paramount Theater in New York for the first time. Teenagers, who had followed the band on radio and had bought its records but could not afford the prices of such places as the Manhattan Room of the Hotel Pennsylvania, where the band usually played, were lined up around the theater at 6 A.M. to get into the morning show for 35 cents. During that day, more than 21,000 people jammed into the theater to bounce deliriously in the seats or shag in the aisles and battle ushers as they made desperate lunges toward the stage. First Jazz Concert At Carnegie Hall Mr.

Goodman heard it again in January 1938, when, looking stiff and uncomfortable in white tie and tails, he led his orchestra in the first jazz concert ever given in Carnegie Hall to an audience that showed its enthusiasm by beating out the band's rhythm with pounding feet that rocked the old hall's balconies. There had been big bands that played swinging dance music before Mr. Goodman organized his orchestra. Fletcher Henderson led a groundbreaking black jazz band in the mid-20's, and in his wake came Duke Ellington, Earl Hines and Jimmie Lunceford, all black. There had also been big, jazz-oriented white bands - Jean Goldkette's Orchestra, the Casa Loma Orchestra and the band in which Mr. Goodman began playing when he was 16 years old, Ben Pollack's Orchestra. But Mr. Goodman's band arrived at a moment when the public's ear had been attuned by these earlier bands. Mr. Goodman provided a blend of jazz and contemporary popular music that filled this demand so successfully that, for a brief period, jazz and popular music were one and the same. His band also represented a blend of the freedom of jazz improvisation and the discipline that Mr.

Goodman demanded from his musicians and, even more, from himself. He practiced his clarinet, his trumpeter Harry James once said, ''15 times more than the whole band combined.'' ''All the time I was with Goodman, he was never satisfied,'' Jess Stacy, the pianist, once said. ''With him, perfection was just around the corner. I figure Benny will die in bed with that damn clarinet.'' In rehearsal or performance, Mr. Goodman's musicians dreaded ''the ray'' - a long, accusatory, poker-faced glare over the top of his glasses at anyone who had committed a false musical move. ''If you're interested in music,'' Mr. Goodman once said, ''you can't slop around. I expected things and they had to be done.'' This discipline and his feeling for tempo produced performances that audiences that had not been exposed to much jazz found more exciting than the looser, more deeply jazz-flavored playing of Mr. Henderson's band, in which many of Mr. Goodman's most popular arrangements originated. ''Benny was very conscious of tempos,'' Willard Alexander, a booking agent who was one of the band's earliest supporters, once said.

''His music had a kind of lilt, a feel. I remember one time we dropped into the Roosevelt Grill when Guy Lombardo was playing there. Benny said to me, 'You know, this Lombardo's got something.' I thought he was putting me on. But he wasn't. 'You know his secret,' Benny said. 'He never plays a song in the wrong tempo.' '' 'No Glamour, No Sex Appeal' ''Benny was a phenomenon,'' Mr. Alexander went on. ''He was not really the biggest band of the swing era. Glenn Miller was. But Benny was the biggest new thing in this type of presentation. He was even different physically, contrary to what everybody expected in a band leader. No glamour. No sex appeal. But a well-grounded musician. Once he hit, in came the others in the same pattern. Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller. Like Goodman, they were not the typical Hollywood glamour boys. They wore glasses. They had musical experience. They were not young or green. And they had a lot of background.'' Mr.

Goodman's background went back to Chicago, where he was born on May 30, 1909, the eighth of 12 children in the family of an immigrant tailor who rarely earned more than $20 a week. He was 10 when he got a clarinet on loan from a local synagogue that also provided music lessons. His brother, Harry, the biggest of the Goodman boys, was given a tuba. Freddy, the next largest, received a trumpet. In later years, Benny Goodman wondered what kind of career he might have had ''if I had been 20 pounds heavier and two inches taller.'' When he was 12, the youth won $5 at a Chicago theater doing an imitation of Ted Lewis, and by the time he was 14 he was making $48 a week playing four nights in the neighborhood band. He also played in the band at Hull House, the celebrated Chicago settlement house, and studied for two years with Franz Shoepp, a clarinetist in the Chicago Symphony, a strict disciplinarian who, Mr.

Goodman said, ''did more for me musically than anyone I ever knew.'' Still wearing short pants, he became part of a clique of teenage jazz musicians that included the cornetist Jimmy McPartland, the saxophonist Bud Freedman and the drummer Dave Tough, who were fascinated by the jazz sounds that flowed through Chicago in the 20's. He absorbed in his own playing the beautiful tone and sparkling flow of Jimmie Noone, the clarinetist. 'Kid in Short Pants' Is Summoned Leon Rappolo, clarinetist in the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, who leaned so far back in his chair when he played that he seemed to be lying down, influenced both Mr. Goodman's style and his posture. When Ben Pollack, the drummer in the Rhythm Kings, formed a band in California, he sent back to Chicago for ''the kid in the short pants, the kid who played lying down, like Rappolo.'' Mr. Goodman was 16 when he joined the Pollack band in Venice, Calif., in 1926. He remained in the band for four years, when Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland and Mr.

Goodman's brother, Harry, were in the band. For the last two years, the Pollack band was based in New York, playing at the Little Club and at the Park Central Hotel (now the Omni-Park Hotel) and doubling in the pit of a musical, ''Hello, Daddy.'' In the fall of 1929, after some disagreements with Mr. Pollack, Mr. Goodman left the band and began to freelance on radio and records, making as much as $350 to $400 a week in the early days of the Depression. In 1933, he met a young jazz fan and jazz activist, John Hammond, whose enthusiasm, insight and energy were to have a profound effect on the careers of Mr. Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie and Charlie Christian, the short-lived, precedent-setting electric guitarist who played in Mr. Goodman's band for two years before his death in 1941. Mr. Hammond, who had a commission to make some jazz records for release in England, asked Mr. Goodman to lead a band for this purpose. Mr. Goodman chose some of his freelance friends, a group that Mr.

Hammond augmented by borrowing Gene Krupa and Jack Teagarden from Mal Hallett's orchestra in Boston. These records, released as by ''Benny Goodman and His Orchestra,'' planted a seed that took root in 1934, when, with his freelance income reduced to $40 a week, Mr. Goodman heard that Billy Rose was auditioning bands for a new club called the Music Hall. With the help of Mr. Hammond, he started putting a band together. ''There were practically no hot bands using white musicians at the time,'' Mr. Goodman later recalled, ''and there was a lot of talent around town, both in jobs and laying off, that hadn't gotten the breaks.'' A Tight Group, Every Man a Soloist His concept was a jazz band made up of young musicians who read well and played in tune, a group with a tight, small-band quality in which every man could be a soloist. The band he and Mr. Hammond assembled included Claude Thornhill, the pianist, who soon returned to studio work, and three musicians who remained with Mr.

Goodman through the band's early days of glory - Red Ballard, trombonist: Arthur Rollini (brother of Adrian), saxophonist, and Hymie Schertzer. Mr. Schertzer's alto saxophone later gave the Goodman saxophone section its sheen, but he was hired because Mr. Goodman had heard he would need a violin in his band to accompany the shows at the Music Hall and Mr. Schertzer could play violin as well as saxophone. Ironically, Mr. Goodman's band was not able to play the routine accompanying music for the Music Hall's vaudeville acts - tumblers, a fire eater, a dog act - to Billy Rose's satisfaction. They were on the verge of being released when a compromise was reached - a second band would play for the shows and Mr. Goodman's band would play for dancing. Three months later, when the Music Hall's management changed, the band was let go. But before that happened, the band auditioned for a prospective three-hour weekly radio program to be divided between Latin music, ''sweet'' music and ''hot'' music. Xavier Cugat had already been signed as the Latin band.

Murray Kellner (as Kel Murray) led the ''sweet'' band. The sponsor, the National Biscuit Company, lined up several ''hot'' bands and had some of its employes vote on them. Benny Goodman won by one vote. During the 26 weeks that Mr. Goodman played on this ''Let's Dance'' program, he had a budget with which to buy eight arrangements a week at $37.50 each. Edgar Sampson's $37.50 arrangement of ''Stompin' at the Savoy,'' played on the first ''Let's Dance'' broadcast, became one of Mr. Goodman's classics. Another arranger, Gordon Jenkins, wrote ''Goodbye,'' which became Mr. Goodman's closing theme. He also got his opening signature, ''Let's Dance,'' from the show - a ''hot'' arrangement of Carl Maria Von Weber's ''Invitation to the Dance'' written by George Bassman, who also provided a Latin version for Mr. Cugat and a ''sweet'' version for Mr. Kellner. Paying $37.50 For 'Killer-Dillers' But the most important collection of arrangements that Mr.

Goodman got for his $37.50 came from Fletcher Henderson who, in 1934, had given up the big band he had led for 11 years. Some of these arrangements had originally been played by the Henderson band. ''King Porter Stomp'' and ''Big John Special'' were the first two, providing Mr. Goodman with the basis for the library of what became known as ''killer-dillers.'' But, at Mr. Goodman's urging, Mr. Henderson also wrote arrangements of popular songs that established the melodic and swinging style of the Goodman band. ''Fletcher's ideas were far ahead of anybody else's at the time,'' Mr. Goodman said. ''Without Fletcher, I probably would have had a pretty good band, but it would have been something quite different from what it eventually turned out to be.'' Mr. Henderson's insistently swinging scores typify the Goodman band's style. George Simon, in his book ''The Big Bands,'' described them as ''simple, swinging arrangements in which complete sections played with the feeling of a single jazz soloist.'' ''In addition,'' Mr. Simon wrote, ''Henderson would set off one section against another, rolling saxes vs.

crisp brass, an approach quite different from the less rhythmic, more lethargic-sounding ensembles of most dance bands.'' After the ''Let's Dance'' program went off the air, Mr. Goodman's band was, inexplicably, booked into the Roosevelt Grill as a summer replacement for Guy Lombardo's ''Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven.'' Mr. Goodman's musicians had scarcely let out their first ''hot'' blast on opening night at the Roosevelt when they were given their two weeks' notice. The trail of discouragement continued as the band headed west toward California and the sudden turnaround at the Palomar Ballroom. First Billing As a 'Swing' Band So, instead of taking the train back to New York, Mr. Goodman stayed at the Palomar for two months. Then the band went to Chicago, where, booked into the Joseph Urban Room of the Congress Hotel, it stayed for six months. In Chicago it was billed for the first time as a ''swing'' band, with the word in quotes - ''as if,'' Mr.

Goodman remarked, ''it was something in a foreign language.'' The word had been used for years by musicians - Duke Ellington wrote ''It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing'' in 1932. But the general public seized on ''swing'' as a trendy catchword. However, references to Mr. Goodman as ''the King of Swing'' made him nervous. ''I didn't know how long it was going to last,'' he explained, ''and I didn't want to be tied down to something people might say was old-fashioned just because they tired of the name in a year or so.'' But swing fever was on the rise, and in December 1935, some of Mr. Goodman's fans organized what may have been the first jazz concert. It was advertised as a ''Tea Dance'' and it was held in the Joseph Urban Room. But it was a sit-down-and-listen affair and a few people who instinctively tried to dance were booed off the floor. The response was so enthusiastic that another concert was organized for Easter Sunday in 1936. This time Mr. Goodman flew Teddy Wilson, the pianist, out to Chicago from New York.

Less than a year before, Mr. Goodman had jammed with Mr. Wilson at the home of Mildred Bailey, the singer, accompanied on drums by Miss Bailey's cousin, Carl Bellinger. This led to some recordings by a trio made up of Mr. Goodman, Mr. Wilson and Gene Krupa, the Goodman band's drummer, made just before Mr. Goodman's fateful trip to the West Coast. This Chicago concert was the first time the trio performed in public. The performance was so successful that Mr. Goodman decided to keep Mr. Wilson and the trio as a regular part of his troupe. A Breakthrough In the Color Barrier This created a precedent, quickly copied by other swing bands, of having a small group within the big band. And by making Mr. Wilson, a black, a part of his entourage, Mr. Goodman broke through the color barrier that, until then, had kept white bands white and black bands black. A few months later, while the band was in Hollywood making its first movie, ''The Big Broadcast of 1937,'' Mr. Goodman heard Lionel Hampton leading a band at the Paradise Cafe and, after enjoying an after-hours jam session with him, persuaded Mr.

Hampton to add his vibraphone to the trio, making it a quartet that was 50 percent black. For the next four years the Goodman band rode on the crest of the Swing Era popularity, despite a brief challenge from another clarinet-playing leader, Artie Shaw. The cheers and shouts of approval were seemingly endless. In 1938, when the band's second film, ''Hollywood Hotel,'' opened in New York, The New York Times film critic, Frank Nugent, reported: ''You couldn't hear anything but the audience except when the picture worked its volume to a storm-warning level. It would have taken more than that, though, to override their howling when Mr. Goodman's clarinet came into camera range.'' Not long after appearing in the film, Mr. Goodman performed with other jazz musicians in the Broadway musical ''Swingin' the Dream,'' which opened in 1939. The eye of the Goodman whirwind was the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, where the band spent several months each year. When Mr. Goodman's mother came to hear his band for the first time, she looked around in amazement.

''This is the way he makes a living?'' she asked. In the summer of 1940, despite a steady load of engagements, Mr. Goodman broke up his band to take three months off to undergo surgery for a painful case of sciatica. When he reorganized his band in October of that year, the bulk of the arranging was taken over by Eddie Sauter, a trumpet player who had played and arranged for Red Norvo and who, in the 1950's, would be co-leader of an adventurous band with Bill Finegan. Mr. Finegan was making his reputation as an arranger with Glenn Miller at the very time that Mr. Sauter began arranging for the new Goodman band. The New Band Of the 1940's For this 1940's band, Mr. Goodman lured away Duke Ellington's trumpet star, Cootie Williams. He had a brilliant 18-year-old pianist, Mel Powell, and such veterans as Charlie Christian, Dave Tough, Billy Butterfield, Lou McGarity and Georgie Auld.

In the opinion of many Goodman fanciers, this band of the early 40's, less publicized than his band of the 30's but with Mr. Sauter's provocative arrangements, was the finest of the Benny Goodman bands. It was during the 40's also that Mr. Goodman appeared in another Brodway musical, this time with a small group. The show was ''Seven Lively Arts,'' which opened in December 1944. Mr. Goodman continued to lead a big band until 1950. After World War II, he tried, briefly, to adapt to the new jazz style - be-bop - but soon gave it up, to the relief of proponents of both be-bop and swing. Meanwhile, Mr. Goodman carried on a dalliance with classical music. In 1935 John Hammond, who, despite his devotion to jazz, expressed himself musically by playing viola in classical string quartets, enticed Mr. Goodman to join his quartet in playing the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. It was an intoxicating whiff for the clarinetist.

He subsequently played, and recorded, with the Budapest Quartet, with Joseph Szigeti and with symphony orchestras. He commissioned works by Bela Bartok, Aaron Copland and Paul Hindemith. During the 1940's, he studied with Reginald Kell, a renowned classical clarinetist, learning a new embouchure that required the use of a new set of facial muscles and a change in fingering for which he had his finger callouses surgically removed. Goodman Sidemen Played in Film In 1955, ''The Benny Goodman Story,'' a biographical film, was made in which Steve Allen played Mr. Goodman, and the producer assembled a band studded with former Goodman sidemen to play the sound track. Through the 50's, 60's and 70's, he formed small groups and big bands sporadically for concerts and tours, concentrating on the hits he had established in the Swing Era. Mr. Goodman took his music around the world, playing duets with the King of Thailand, a fellow clarinetist. At the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, his band was regarded as one of the best American exhibits.

He took a band to the Soviet Union in 1962 as part of a cultural exchange arrangement, producing a mixture of adulation and controversy, including an impromptu debate on jazz with Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev. In 1941, Mr. Goodman married Alice Duckworth, the sister of his friend John Hammond. She died in 1979. Mr. Goodman is survived by two daughters, Rachel Edelson and Benjie Lasseau; four brothers, Harry, Freddy, Irving and Gene; two sisters, Ethel Goodman and Ida Winsberg, and three stepdaughters. The police said Mr. Goodman's body had been taken to the Metropolitan Funeral Home in Manhattan and was to be transferred to the Bouton & Reynolds Funeral Home in Stamford, Conn. Funeral arrangements were incomplete last night. Some Rememberances ''Working with Benny Goodman wasn't a job, it was an experience. Benny meant a whole lot to me, not only as a teacher but as a friend. I loved the man.'' - Frank Sinatra. ''You think of clarinet and Benny Goodman simultaneously. He had an innate dignity about him, coupled with his integrity in music.

He was a step in the refinement of jazz. He upheld standards that were never less than the Carnegie Hall type of thing. He taught me the value of rehearsing and discipline, and that's a great value in any craft.'' - Peggy Lee. ''The world's greatest artist on the classical clarinet, and his orchestra was one of the best of all time.'' - Steve Allen. ''He proved that good music could reach the general public. He was the most popular figure in the history of jazz to reach a non-jazz public. He was the Beatles of his day. And he did it with pure, uncompromising music. He never compromised.'' - George Wein. Chick Webb: The Savoy King - JazzTimes Chick Webb: The Savoy King Tom Reney blogs about one of the greatest drummers in jazz history Tom Reney Chick Webb Chick Webb’s early death has tended to obscure the status he enjoyed among his peers during his lifetime. Best known for discovering Ella Fitzgerald, who recorded about 50 sides with Webb’s orchestra, including “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” it was actually Webb’s drumming and the precision swing of his orchestra that made him a household name during the Swing Era.

Art Blakey, Louis Bellson, Buddy Rich and other drummers who emerged in the early’40s spoke of him with reverence; Stan Levey, who played with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in 1945, called him “my first hero.” Gary Giddins celebrated him as “an absolutely brilliant drummer,” and in the documentary series, Ken Burns Jazz, Giddins exclaims over the force with which Webb’s foot pedal work required nailing his drum kit to the stage of the Savoy Ballroom. Webb’s accomplishments were made all the more remarkable by the spinal tuberculosis that caused him to develop a hunchback, plagued him with pain and fatigue and led to his premature death in 1939 at the age of 34. (Webb’s birthdate was never firmly established, but most sources cite February 10, 1905.) Webb’s diminutive size only added to his larger than life stature among musicians and the thousands of jitterbuggers who packed the dance floor of the Savoy to hear him throughout the ’30s.

While Webb’s recorded legacy is muddied by the aural quality of the recordings he made for Decca, and his band lacked for household-name soloists, he remains a compelling historical figure largely because of his association with the Savoy. Located at the corner of 140th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, the Savoy Ballroom was ground zero for Lindy Hoppers of all races at a time when most New York venues still clung to Jim Crow customs, and the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington presided, was off-limits to anyone but the rich and famous. The Savoy catered to the African American working class, but as Norma Miller recounts in Ken Burns Jazz, “The first place in the world that black and white walked through the door together [was the] Savoy. They were joined by a simple thing called Swing.” In the Chick Webb documentary The Savoy King, Miller says, “We fought a war with music and dance and that opened doors.” Webb’s brilliant drumming was fired by a competitive zeal that served him well in the many battles of the bands he engaged in at the Savoy.

Unfazed by any challenger, Webb’s orchestra locked horns with Basie, Goodman, Lunceford, Ellington and many others. As Louis Armstrong improvised in a lively duet with Ella Fitzgerald on “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” “Chick Webb cut ’em all.” In his autobiography Good Morning Blues, Basie credits an encounter with Webb for opening up new doors for his outfit. The two bands squared off on January 16, 1938, the same night that Benny Goodman presented his historic Carnegie Hall concert. Before the Count and several other Basie-ites went downtown to join BG, they did battle with Webb. “The Savoy was a big sellout that night because of all the buildup, and the gig itself brought us a lot of favorable publicity, because when it was over, it was written up just as though my band had been battling Chick for the championship,” wrote Basie. “That made people more curious about us than ever before. It helped us get bigger and better bookings, and didn’t hurt our record sales, either.” As for Webb, Basie recalled, “The Savoy was really [his] turf…and the Little Giant took charge there.

And I mean he really took charge…If you never got a chance to hear that band live, you really missed something.” It was Webb’s face-off with Goodman several months earlier that made history. Billed as “The Musical Battle of the Century,” it was witnessed by an SRO crowd of 4,000 who packed the Savoy while another 5,000 thronged the sidewalks outside. BG was already being promoted as the King of Swing, but for blacks especially, Webb was the uncrowned king. And on the occasion of May 11, 1937, the verdict was in his favor. As Gene Krupa said of his drumming counterpart, “Chick Webb had cut me to ribbons.” The battle is recounted in an episode of Ken Burns Jazz, where there’s a neat back and forth sequence between the Webb and Goodman bands playing “Don’t Be That Way.” It was the story of the Webb-Goodman contest that intrigued filmmaker Jeff Kaufman. “It was said that Webb’s band ‘wiped the floor’ with Goodman. Mind you, his was then the most famous band in the land. I said, ‘Wow,’ there seemed to be so little information out there.

I just had to find out more.” The result is the documentary Chick Webb: The Savoy King, which premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2011. Next Article Band Members - Kings of Swing Band Members next show - Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA DAYS HOURS MINUTE SECOND View Calendar The Kings of Swing is a 17-piece dance band that originated in 1944 at Seattle’s Cleveland High School as the school pep band. The group soon became known as the Kings of Swing in a tip of the hat to the King of Swing Benny Goodman. The young members loved playing and, after graduating, they decided to stick together. They played through the war years until 1949 at service clubs, YMCA and USO dances, high school proms and various other functions. In 1987 the seven original members decided to revive the band. The last of the original members have retired, but their legacy is still part of the Kings of Swing tradition of excellent music. In 1985 The band was part of a cultural exchange and traveled to St Petersburg, Russia to play as part of the White Nights Festival.

They Played at Oktyabrsky Hall and The Jazz Philharmonic Hall in St. Petersburg. The Kings released their first CD Full Circle in 1998. It features vocals by Tony McArthy and some of the original Kings’ musicians. In 1998 the Kings laid down a track for the movie The Trouble with Boys and Girls. Blue Skies their latest CD was released in 2003 and features vocals by both Tony McArthy and Elizabeth Hott. The band plays a great mix of big band songs. Upcoming Concerts & Dances Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA 07 Feb 7:45 pm Dance to The Kings of Swing Big Band on the largest wood dance floor in Kent at the Kent Senior Center. The band plays from 7:45-9:30 pm. These dances are not just for seniors but are open to the general public of all ages. We often have young dance groups showing up to do their version of jigger bugging.

City of Kent, Washington Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA 07 Mar 7:45 pm Dance to The Kings of Swing Big Band on the largest wood dance floor in Kent at the Kent Senior Center. The band plays from 7:45-9:30 pm. These dances are not just for seniors but are open to the general public of all ages. We often have young dance groups showing up to do their version of jigger bugging. City of Kent, Washington Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA 04 Apr 7:45 pm Dance to The Kings of Swing Big Band on the largest wood dance floor in Kent at the Kent Senior Center. The band plays from 7:45-9:30 pm. These dances are not just for seniors but are open to the general public of all ages. We often have young dance groups showing up to do their version of jigger bugging.

City of Kent, Washington Kent Senior Center – Kent, WA MIDTERM REVIEW - Music 110cl with Simpson at Saint Leo University - StudyBlue Charlie Patton invented which instrumental technique that was associated with Delta blues: sliding a blunt knife or bottleneck on the neck of the guitar. In Chicago one subgenre of the blues called__________became more lighthearted and sexually explicit and commonly included additional instruments, like the harmonica. hokem blues After the blues evolved in the Mississippi Delta the first city to which blues musicians carried the new genre was: Memphis. Robert Johnson is associated with which subgenre of the blues? Mississippi Delta Blues. Muddy Waters is associated with which subgenre of the blues? Chicago blues A resurgence of popularity for the blues resulted when ___musicians began playing blues music for middle class white audiences. British People who were born in New Orleans and were intricately involved in the birth of jazz were known as: Creoles of Color. The most influential instrumental ensembles that became the prototype of Dixieland jazz bands was the: funeral procession band. According to old legends, ____, New Orleans' infamous red-light district, provided employment to many New Orleans jazz musicians.

Storyville The first recording of jazz music was made in 1917 by: Original Dixieland Jazz Band. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was unusual in that: the band included two cornet players, including the young Louis Armstrong. _____, a white cornetist, founded the cool school stain of jazz. Bid Beiderbecke Singing on nonsense syllables to imitate a jazz instrument is known as: scat singing Playing music spontaneously without written notation is known as: improvisation. Impromptu arrangements of short repeated phrases that become foundations for improvisation are called: riff charts. In the mid-thirties to mid-forties jazz bands added more instruments to each section and became known as: big bands. ______was one of the most popular Kansas City band leaders, known for his excellent rhythm section. Count Basie _____led the house band at the Cotton Club in Harlem from 1927-1931. Duke Ellington _______was known as the "king of swing." Benny Goodman _____was the most famous sax player of the bebop style of jazz. Charlie Parker ______played cool jazz on many college campuses.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet When jazz music is blended with rock or R & B styles it becomes known as: fusion jazz. _____had a long career as a jazz trumpet player, and experimented with blending several other musical styles with jazz. Miles Davis _______is an example of a rock band that incorporated jazz harmonies and improvisational instrumental solos into their music. Blood Sweat and Tears The word jazz was originally a: slang term with sexual connotations. Many British folk ballads are called Child Ballads because: they were named for Francis James Child, the scholar who collected them. Broadsides differ from Child Ballads in that they: were composed and printed on large single sheets. The nineteenth-century popular perception of rural life was: romantic and sentimental. The record industry's efforts to appeal to various regional and ethnic groups. Early country music performers sometimes dressed in straw hats and ragged clothes referred to as: rube costumes. The most successful barn-dance format radio shows were the Grand Ole Opry and: National Barn Dance. Freelance talent scout Ralph Peer discovered two of the most important acts of early country music in a field trip he made to Tennessee called: the Bristol Sessions.

One of the most successful family singing groups in early country music was: the Carter Family. The most famous of the "singing cowboys" was: Gene Autry. Leonard Slye began his singing career as a member of the western singing group the Sons of the Pioneers but left the group to: become Gene Autry's rival as America's most popular singing cowboy, Roy Rogers. Western Swing, an eclectic dance music, originated in: Texas. The major figure in the development of Western Swing was: Bob Wills. _____developed in establishments of the same name that sprang up during the oil boom in Texas during the 1930s. Honky-tonk The first great Honky-tonk singer was: Ernest Tubbs. The city that became the center for outlaw contry and redneck rock was: Austin. One of the most popular stars of the Outlaw Country subgenre is: Willie Nelson. What two instruments create the distinctive sound of honky-tonk music? Electric guitar and steel guitar Which country music singer developed a successful music publishing company that established Nashville as the world music center? Roy Acuff The most legendary figure to come out of Acuff-Rose was: Hank Williams.

Two of the most successful "crossover" artists in country/pop music are Patsy Cline and: Chet Atkins. One of the first female country music stars who married at thirteen and raised four children while pursuing her career was: Loretta Lynn. _______is a subgenre that developed relatively late in country music's history, but sounds like it is much older. Bluegrass music The indisputable founder of bluegrass music is: Bill Monroe. The group of male artists referred to as "the class of 89" includes: Alan Jackson, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, and Garth Brooks. The most successful artist in country music in the 1990s was: Garth Brooks. The country music icon kick-named "the man in black" refers to: Johnny Cash. The country music performer(s) that was boycotted after making a derogatory comment about the president was (were): The Dixie Chicks. _______produced the album Shock'n Ya'll shortly after the U.S. invaded Iraq, underscoring the huge connection between country music and the military. Toby Keith The first 30 years of commercial country music were male-dominated because: Southern culture guarded womanly virtue.

Conservative country music fans didn't approve of single women doing road trips. The popular country music topics of hard-drinking and cheating were not acceptable for women. Because of the popularity of country music, Nashville has become known as: Music City, U.S.A. Benny Goodman - The King of Swing Click here for an extended biography. For a kid who liked jazz, Chicago was a great town to grow up in. Musicians had begun working their way north from New Orleans about the turn of the century, and by the early 1920s giants like "Jellyroll" Morton, Sidney Bechet, "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were playing in Chicago and making history. Kids who paid attention to this development were going to make history themselves in a few more years - Bud Freeman, Davie Tough, Eddie Condon, Milt Mesirow (Mezz Mezzrow), Gene Krupa, "Muggsy" Spanier, Jimmy McPartland, Jess Stacy - and a kid in short pants who played the clarinet. Benny Goodman was only 10 when he first picked up a clarinet. Only a year or so later he was doing Ted Lewis imitations for pocket money.

At 14 he was in a band that featured the legendary Bix Beiderbecke. By the time he was 16 he was recognized as a "comer" as far away as the west coast and was asked to join a California-based band led by another Chicago boy, Ben Pollack. Goodman played with Pollack's band for the next four years. His earliest recording was made with Pollack, but he was also recording under his own name in Chicago and New York, where the band had migrated from the west coast. In 1929, when he was just 20, Benny struck out on his own to become a typical New York freelance musician, playing studio dates, leading a pit orchestra, making himself a seasoned professional. By 1934 he was seasoned enough to be ready for his first big break. He heard that Billy Rose needed a band for his new theatre restaurant, the Music Hall, and he got together a group of musicians who shared his enthusiasm for jazz. They auditioned and got the job. Then Benny heard that NBC was looking for three bands to rotate on a new Saturday night broadcast to be called "Let's Dance," a phrase that has been associated with the Goodman band ever since.

One band on the show was to be sweet, one Latin, and the third hot. The Goodman band was hot enough to get the job, but not hot enough to satisfy Benny. He brought in Gene Krupa on drums. Fletcher Henderson began writing the arrangements - arrangements that still sound fresh more than a half century later. And the band rehearsed endlessly to achieve the precise tempos, section playing and phrasing that ushered in a new era in American music. There was only one word that could describe this band's style adequately: Swing. After six months of broadcasting coast to coast the band was ready for a cross-country tour. The band was ready but the country was not. The tour was a disaster until its last date in August, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The only plausible explanation for what happened there is that "Let's Dance" was aired three hours earlier on the west coast than in the east. The kids in Los Angeles had been listening, and thousands of them turned out to hear the band in person at the Palomar. They hadn't even come to dance; instead they crowded around the bandstand just to listen.

It was a new kind of music with a new kind of audience, and their meeting at the Palomar made national headlines. When the band headed east again, after nearly two months at the Palomar, they were famous. They played for seven months at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where Teddy Wilson joined them to complete the Benny Goodman Trio. Back in New York Lionel Hampton made it the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the band was a sensation at the Hotel Pennsylvania's Madhattan Room. The band made it even bigger at the Paramount Theatre, where lines began forming at breakfast time and continued through the last daily show. It was grueling for the kids who waited for hours to dance in the aisles. It was more grueling for the band; they returned each night to the Madhattan Room for still more swing. At the age of 28 Benny Goodman had reached what seemed to be the pinnacle of success. The new radio program, "The Camel Caravan," was scheduled in prime time, and the whole nation listened not only to the band itself but to the intelligent commentary by some of the most influential critics of the day, including Clifton Fadiman and Robert Benchley. But it was not quite the pinnacle.

On January 16, 1938, Sol Hurok, the most prestigious impresario in America, booked the Benny Goodman band into Carnegie Hall. For generations Carnegie Hall had been the nation's greatest temple of musical art, home of the New York Philharmonic and scene of every important artist's debut (even if they had played in a hundred other concert halls first). So this was a debut not only for Benny Goodman but for jazz. Though many others followed him to Carnegie Hall, there has never been another concert with such an impact. It even made his "classical" Carnegie Hall debut more newsworthy a few years later when Benny returned there to launch his second career, as a soloist with major symphony orchestras and chamber groups. Benny Goodman was indisputably the King of Swing - the title was invented by Gene Krupa - and he reigned as such thereafter until his death in 1986 at age 77. Over the years he played with the greatest figures in jazz: Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Mildred Bailey, Bessie Smith and countless others.

Many of those who played with him as sidemen later achieved fame as leaders of their own bands, as soloists, or even as movie or TV actors - Harry James, Ziggy Elman, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton to name a few. A list of Benny's hits would fill a book. In fact it filled several books by his devoted discographer/biographer Russ Connor. That crowded career, spanning more than six decades, had an almost unparalleled impact on popular music and the importance of the clarinet in both jazz and classical music. Thousands of youngsters throughout the world were influenced to play the clarinet through listening to Benny Goodman's recordings and live performances, and the style of those who turned to jazz was universally patterned after what they heard Benny play, whether or not they realized it. The popularity of the "big band" format is another of the legacies of this musical giant. Duke Ellington was also known as the "King of Swing." A. true B. false Duke Ellington was also known as the "King of Swing." A. true B. false A. True.

Duke Ellington was also known as the "King of Swing." Expert answered| andrewpallarca |Points 18612| Duke Ellington was also known as the "King of Swing." A. true B. false New answers There are no new answers. Comments Log in or sign up first. Questions asked by the same visitor Weegy: In the Big Band era, the saxophone became the instrument of choice. This is because a sax player can play and sing at the same time. The answer is True. (More) Question Duke Ellington was also known as the "King of Swing."- This is FALSE. Added 9/13/2014 12:09:54 PM This answer has been added to the Weegy Knowledgebase Weegy: Though he achieved his greatest acclaim as a singer, Frank Sinatra was also a respected actor. TRUE (More) Question Weegy: Sinatra had a tenor singing voice. (False) (More) Question Weegy: The answer is True.

(More) Question Weegy: -54 + 18 = -36 User: Simplify 3(x - 4) + 8(x + 2) User: What is the equation of the line that passes through ... 1/17/2017 1:07:03 PM| 5 Answers Weegy: r(r+3) = 1 User: 5x + 2y = 20, when x = 0.3? User: What is the value of a in the equation 3a + b = 54, when b ...

1/17/2017 9:50:12 AM| 3 Answers Weegy: 5|7 - 9| - 2; 5(2) - 2; 10 - 2 = 8 User: Evaluate |a + b - c|, given a = 5, b = -3, and c = -2 1/16/2017 5:07:37 PM| 2 Answers Weegy: 5 - 3x when x = -7 5 - 3(-7); = 5 - (-21); = 5 + 21; = 26 User: Evaluate 5|7 - 9| - 2 User: Evaluate |6| ...

1/16/2017 5:09:01 PM| 2 Answers Benny Goodman — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm fip Benny Goodman, born Benjamin David Goodman, (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz musician, known as King of Swing, Patriarch of the Clarinet, The Professor, and Swing's Senior Statesman. Goodman was regarded by some as a demanding taskmaster, by others an arrogant and eccentric martinet. Many musicians spoke of The Ray, Goodman's trademark glare that he bestowed on a musician who failed to perform to his demanding standards. Anita O'Day and Helen Forrest spoke bitterly of their… read more Benny Goodman: Forever The King Of Swing : NPR Embed Embed <iframe src="" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Beyond making jazz a viable music form, Benny Goodman was the first to hire an African-American, Teddy Wilson, to play piano onstage with a white band.

Hulton Archives/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Hulton Archives/Getty Images Bandleader Benny Goodman was born 100 years ago Saturday. Raised in Chicago, Goodman rose from poverty to become a virtuoso clarinetist and the poster boy for the Swing Era. Along the way, Goodman's innovations changed the landscape of American music. By the start of World War II, Goodman was an international celebrity. On a "V-Disc" created for the troops overseas, he recalled one of the moments that got him there. "We gave the first swing concert that was ever heard in Carnegie, and I can tell you, it was a real thrill for me," Goodman said. "Yes, and I can vouch for the fact that, from the response you got, a lot of the long-hairs in the audience got a big kick out of hearing the music you dished out to them," an announcer said. The Game-Changer At Carnegie Hall On the evening of Jan. 16, 1938, Goodman took the first jazz band to the stage of Carnegie Hall.

"Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall in 1938 takes a stand that jazz, however folk-rooted, can be high art and can make it just as a listening concern," jazz historian Phil Schaap says. Article continues after sponsorship Schaap produced the 1999 reissue of Goodman's Carnegie Hall Concert. Up to that point, swing was music for dances and nightclubs. Schaap says the performance at America's most prestigious music venue was a courageous step on Goodman's part. "Because he was risking some very bad reviews, since the music critics at the time were not jazz people," Schaap says. "You didn't have a jazz critic at a publication. You had a music critic who probably was on the record saying jazz was junk." Instead, critics and audience members were bowled over by the sophisticated, up-tempo "hot" jazz arrangements written by Fletcher Henderson . The concert was the culmination of a process that began three years earlier at the Palomar Ballroom in Hollywood, where Goodman premiered this sound. The dancers went wild. Other bands copied Goodman, and the Swing Era was born.

A Human Quality In her Waverly Place apartment, Israeli-born clarinetist Anat Cohen is transcribing Benny Goodman solos, preparing to celebrate his centennial next month at the Village Vanguard . "I wish I could just be there at that time, and I could just get up and dance, and jitterbug with everybody else," Cohen says. "His swing is just so exciting. And he really goes all the way from top to bottom and back up on the whole clarinet — and it's hip, it's traditional and it's Benny." Cohen says what's special for her about Goodman's clarinet playing — aside from being virtuosic and swinging — is its human quality. "So when you listen to him playing, you hear a personality," Cohen says. "It's not just clarinet playing. It's someone that's just expressing everything they can on clarinet." Not So 'Sweet' Beginnings "Sweet" is how they described the music at the time. But Goodman's life was anything but. He was born Benjamin David Goodman in Chicago on May 30, 1909, to poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Benny was the ninth of 12 children.

His father worked menial jobs, including shoveling lard at the Chicago stockyards. By the time Goodman was 14, he was able to help his family playing music. "Then, when they were making a little money, they bought their father a newsstand. And then one day, on his way home, he was crossing the street, there was a hit-and-run driver who killed him," says Dan Morgenstern, author of Living with Jazz. "And that was one huge blow to Benny, because Benny was very close to his father." Integrating The Band Goodman went on to have a huge impact on American culture beyond music. In 1936, he hired Teddy Wilson to play piano in his trio. It's widely regarded as the first time a black musician appeared onstage with a white band. In 1979, Wilson was interviewed for the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies by fellow musician Milt Hinton . The pianist recalled that, unlike Jackie Robinson's experience in baseball 11 years later, the integration of the Goodman band met with almost universal acceptance. "As a matter of fact, it was an asset, the racial mixing," Wilson said. "The interest in the United States was just tremendous.

And the public was so for the thing. Not one negative voice in any audience that we ever heard — just tremendous enthusiasm. The jazz fans were like — they were just hungry for this sort of thing." Later that same year, Goodman added electric vibraphonist Lionel Hampton to the mix, and in 1939, the Goodman band gave listeners another surprise: an electric guitar played by another African-American, Charlie Christian . Goodman Made Jazz Exciting Amazingly, every innovation worked. For the second half of the 1930s, Goodman was the most popular instrumentalist in jazz, at a time when jazz was the most popular music in America. Anat Cohen calls Goodman's career an inspiration. "I think it's incredible," Cohen says. "I think what he achieved — the amount of admiration he got from all ages, from young people to older people... People just were crazy for him. And his music was exciting. And that's something that maybe at some point, jazz was a little bit forgotten — how jazz can really be exciting." Goodman died in 1986, at the age of 77.

When the Swing Era ended, Goodman experimented with bebop and studied classical clarinet, even commissioning new work from Bela Bartok and Aaron Copland . But Benny Goodman will always be best remembered as "The King of Swing."

Question: Who was known as the 'King of Swing'?
Answer: BENNY GOODMAN