Collier terms his ''callous and at times brutal behavior toward his sidemen.'' Although musicians have been telling stories for years about these Goodman traits, Mr. Collier goes into some of the personal qualities that made Goodman widely disliked by musicians -his apparent arrogance, his tactlessness, his tight-fistedness, his self-centeredness and what Mr. Wilson was also one of several Goodman musicians who developed a hatred of him, Mr. He also resisted the suggestion of one of his most active supporters, the publicity agent and record producer Helen Oakley, to have the black pianist Teddy Wilson appear with his band in 1936, although, once set before an audience, Wilson quickly became one of the most popular members of the Goodman troupe. For instance, the record producer John Hammond kept urging Goodman to record with mixed black and white groups of musicians, an idea that appalled Goodman. There were those who insistently pushed Goodman forward despite his reluctance to challenge the commercial precepts of the day. Collier has a wider cast of characters to deal with. Into this vacuum Goodman brought distinctive elements: a young singer just emerging from her teens, Helen Ward, who had tremendous appeal to Goodman's college audiences and who sang with a lilt that equated with the band's swinging beat, and a repertory of excellent arrangements - both jazz standards and current pop songs given jazzlike feeling -written by Fletcher Henderson for Goodman's appearances as the hot band on the three-hour ''Let's Dance'' radio program on Saturday nights in 1934 and early 1935.Īdd to this his perfectionist standards as a musician - his insistence on constant rehearsal both for himself and the band, his painstaking attention to good intonation, well-coordinated section work and the details of dynamics.Īfter 1935, when the band broke through to success, Mr. Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books.That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125.See what’s new in October: Among this month’s new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric.Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more.Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. So James Lincoln Collier's aptly titled ''Benny Goodman and the Swing Era'' devotes a good deal of space to the music world in which Goodman developed, pointing up the fact that the groundwork for what happened to Goodman had been laid over a period of several years and that Goodman, to his own surprise and with a certain amount of reluctance, simply lighted the fuse that produced the Swing Era. But for most fans of the pre-1935 bandstands, all they knew was what they heard on radio, on records and wherever these bands played. Metronome, a long established music magazine, was shifting its primary attention from classical music to dance bands at the same time. The music magazine Down Beat, which began publishing in 1934, a year before Goodman's ascent to fame, was originally a newsletter put out by an insurance agent to enable musicians in traveling bands to keep abreast of the activities of their friends in other bands, and, not incidentally, to sell insurance to them. Although dance bands - some hot, some sweet - could be heard several hours every night broadcasting from ballrooms, clubs and roadhouses all across the country, there were few sources of information about these bands aside from such trade publications as Variety and Billboard.
To most of the excited fans who swarmed to hear Benny Goodman and his orchestra in the mid and late 1930's, the Goodman band seemed to have arrived out of a vacuum. I Can't Love You Anymore.Benny Goodman and the Swing Era By James Lincoln Collier Illustrated.
Benny Goodman And His Orchestra - 1940 "įILE "01.
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