The sound of Benny Goodman - the blazing clarinet soaring above ... Like other music-mad Chicago kids, he fell under the spell of Louis Armstrong, clarinetist Jimmie Noone and other hot New ...

He was the eighth child of immigrants David Goodman and Dora Grisinsky Goodman, who left Russia to escape anti-Semitism. Benny's mother never learned to speak English. His father worked for a tailor ...

Keep away from the instruments, kid!” they shouted. ”Get off the boat!” Undaunted, the lad took out his horn and started to play. Case closed: two minutes later, Benny Goodman had joined Bix ...

Inviting the Benny Goodman band to Carnegie Hall in early 1938 had the vaguely sarcastic aura of suggesting that hungry street urchins be served dinner at the Stork Club. It was all right for them ...

But when the Depression hit, record companies introduced budget lines, which opened the market to teenagers, and by 1935 the kids showed their clout by jitterbugging so happily to Benny Goodman ...

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 ...