Benny Goodman first solos - That's A Plenty/Clarinetitis

[JHolmesesq]

Hi everyone,

I thought this would be of interest to you. A VERY early Benny Goodman solo recording, made when the prodigy was just 19, in 1928.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saiY6YwsQKg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl8jXhh3Khg[/youtube]

[Swing Band Heaven]

Sounds great and he obviously had great skill even at a young age - I've not heard such an early Goodman side before. I wonder if he was well liked though as an individual as I remember reading somewhere a quote that went something along the lines of "the good news is that Benny Goodman is dead, the bad news is that he didn't suffer!" I have always wondered if this was an accurate picture of how he was viewed as a person.

[Wolfe]

That's with Mel Stitzel (piano) and Bob Conselman (drums) originally Vocalion 15705.

It's an excellent side.

Goodman was recording (though as a sideman) at least as early as 1926. He was in Ben Pollack's band along with a young Glenn Miller.

I have always wondered if this was an accurate picture of how he was viewed as a person.

Goodman was known for his sometimes cold and or distant personality, and also his 'death ray' (the withering stare he could pull out when someone wasn't playing to his satisfaction.) But I don't think that quote reflects a universal view of him as a person at all, certainly he was well regarded by many people.

[JHolmesesq]

Yes - I've heard that the Vocalion side is exceedingly rare, perhaps 10 copies exist worldwide? In any case I'm glad to own the next rarest issue on Melotone

[Henry]

Mel Stitzel, the composer of "The Chant," famously recorded by Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers in 1926, with the great George Mitchell on cornet---a very talented jazzer who toiled in the big shadow of Armstrong. It's worth looking this one up. It was on a CD re-issue a few years ago.

In my teaching years, I taught a course in the history of jazz, and one semester one of my senior citizen auditors was a man named John (?) Morganelli, who had briefly played guitar for Goodman in the early '40s IIRC. Goodman fired him, one of many over the years. The late Mr. Morganelli was a very quiet, modest man, and he didn't hold a grudge, so I never formed any opinion of Goodman from him as he had nothing to say except that Goodman was a very exacting taskmaster---no surprise there! BTW, Morganelli's son is the DA in the next county, so I'm not going to diss his old man, even if he deserved it, which he didn't.

[syncopeter]

Benny wrote a book on clarinet licks in 1926 and also recorded a cylinder (afaik) demonstrating them.
At age 17! He probably began composing and righting them down a year earlier.
We see them as early middle-age bandleaders, but they really were the innovating rock musicians of their age.

[Wolfe]

Yes - I've heard that the Vocalion side is exceedingly rare, perhaps 10 copies exist worldwide? In any case I'm glad to own the next rarest issue on Melotone

It was issued on Panachord in the U.K.

Wonder how rare that one is.

[Wolfe]

http://youtu.be/XtYoRYkdi_E

TMF member transformingArt has posted to his fine YouTube channel one of the cylinders recorded by Earl Baker (featuring Goodman) in the autumn of 1926. Recorded around the time of Goodman's very first professional sides with Ben Pollack, in September, 1926 which are still unissued?

[beaumonde]

Around the same time (1928) he recorded some small-group jazz also under his own name for Brunswick (as "Bennie Goodman and His Boys"), later reissued in the Brunswick Collectors Series (from the early '40s). I have one of these ("Room 1411"/"Jungle Blues") in the original form.

[Wolfe]

Goodman's 'Boys' were Glenn Miller, Jimmy McPartland, Glenn Miller, Ben Pollack, Fud Livingston, Vic Briedis. Dick Morgan and Harry Goodman. Plus Tommy Dorsey (on one cut.)