The Benny Goodman Story : Finally A Favourite Record!

 The Benny Goodman Story. Steve Allen and Donna Reed. Vol. 2. This is an album to have if you love swing and jazz. A true classic and I’m proud to actually have listened to something recently that I want to keep! I was in a record music funk for about 3 months there. Very few albums that motivated, until today. I only wish that I had Vol.1.

About the album from Amazon.ca: It lacks the tragic ending of The Glenn Miller Story, a smash hit released a year earlier, but this enjoyable musical biopic does a nice job of blending Benny Goodman’s sweet swinging clarinet with a healthy dose of Hollywood hokum. The emphasis is on Goodman’s struggle to get “hot music” into the mainstream, and his shy wooing of a socialite (Donna Reed). With Steve Allen cast as the bespectacled Goodman, there’s a comic undertone to the bandleader’s somewhat geeky demeanor, and Allen (a musician himself) is believable fronting the orchestra. Real-life swing figures, including Goodman Quartet players Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton, lend verisimilitude. The climax comes with Goodman’s legendary 1938 jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, a turning point in American popular music–and the sight of a mild-mannered man in a tuxedo leading his band through the glorious frenzy of “Sing, Sing, Sing” remains a delight. –Robert Horton

Crank your volume, record blog friends for 8 and half minutes of lovely: 

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the “King of Swing”.  In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as “the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz’s ‘coming out’ party to the world of ‘respectable’ music.” Goodman’s bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, while exploring an interest in classical music.