Influences on Benny Goodman.

In the Feb 1982 issue of Stereo Review

Chris Albertson published his 1981 interview of Benny Goodman. The cover story was reprinted in the blog

http://stomp-off.blogspot.com/2009/10/if-you-think-you-have-benny-goodman.html

Chris had been press secretary for Benny Goodman in 1962 for a couple of months.

Here is an excerpt from the interview where Benny lists the musicians who influenced him.

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In early 1920, Goodman took a record that his brother had brought home, and he committed to memory, note for corny note, the Ted Lewis hit When My Baby Smiles at Me. A subsequent performance of the Lewis number earned young Goodman five dollars at a local vaudeville theater, so it may well constitute his first step toward jazz even though Lewis was decidedly a peripheral figure in that music. Among other recordings Goodman studied were some by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, whose clarinetist, Larry Shields, played in a style that bordered on novelty but which nevertheless contained more jazz substance than Lewis'.

I told Goodman of a book whose author accused him of having stolen his style from Johnny Dodds, "Grand larceny, I suppose," he said, chuckling at the very thought. As anyone with knowledge of the Dodds and Goodman styles will tell you, the notion is ludicrous. Goodman does acknowledge the influence of others on his style, knowing full well that it would be folly to assert that he -or anyone else, for that matter- had a wholly original way of playing. Influences, of course, come in various forms, and Goodman's included the bands of Isham Jones, Paul Whiteman, and Roger Wolfe Kahn and the trumpet styles of Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, and Red Nichols as well as the styles of some clarinetists. "I was very impressed with Jimmie Noone," he says, with a bow to a New Orleans jazz man who is said also to have made a deep impression on the French composer Maurice Ravel, "and Leon Rappolo was also awfully good, though I never heard him in person." Such admiration has left traces of Noone and Rappolo in the Goodman style, but only traces -the unique Goodman approach is much in evidence even on some of the earliest recordings.

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The few names mentioned are fascinationg. Two of the three bands cited by Benny were the most astonishing to me, Paul Whiteman and Roger Wolfe Kahn, especially Kahn, since he did not start recording until 1925. I am not too surprised about the mention of Isham Jones. Benny was born and grew up in Chicago, and in the very early 1920s when Benny was an influenceable teenager, Isham Jones had a phenomenal success at the Rainbow Gardens and the Sherman Hotel. As Bix, Benny first got into jazz (at least, what was viewed as jazz in the 1920s) by listening to records. Another interesting point, Benny mentions three horn players as important influences. It reminds me of what I wrote in my article "Bix Beiderbecke's Piano Compositions: When and Where?" (accepted for publication in the IAJARC Journal, scheduled for March 2010) about Jess Stacy. "Jess Stacy was a great admirer of Bix's. Stacy told Floyd Levin in one of his radio shows that Armstrong and Beiderbecke were the two musicians who influenced him most. When asked by Levin how a pianist could be influenced so profoundly by musicians playing a different instrument, Stacy replied, "I've been accused of playing a trumpet-style piano."

Albert

Here is a streaming file of the Ted Levwis recording, waxed on Dec 9, 1919.

http://www.redhotjazz.com/songs/lewis/whenmybabysmilesatme1919.ram