The Swing Era - Part I
An exact history of how swing and jazz in general took root and spread across the country during the twenties and going into the thirties is impossible. The historical fabric is faded in spots, unraveled in others, ripped with big holes elsewhere. All that’s left is tatters.
Part of the problem was, as usual, racism. Careful records were not preserved or even made that documented how the gospel of jazz traveled nor who the apostles were that carried this good news far and wide. We can be certain that most of those apostles were black therefore ignored by the mainstream and therefore forgotten by posterity. Many recordings made during this time that might have afforded us important clues are now probably gone forever and those that may yet be found will be too sparse to fill out a proper narrative that surely must be rich in detail if it could ever be assembled with all its historical facts in place. Like the burning of the Library of Alexandria, most of the data has perished while only a pitiful few remnants remain—not nearly enough to tell us much of anything but only tantalize us with possibilities.
Another problem was the Depression. So many vibrant jazz scenes across the country collapsed virtually overnight that we know next to nothing about them today. Musicians migrated en masse to wherever they could find work, shutting the door behind them as they left and this, in turn, shut the door on adequate historical research.
Also World War II had an effect. There were so many shortages in the country that the recording industry ground to a virtual halt due to lack of lacquer shipments from the Far East due to Japanese seizure of that region of the world. Records were made from shellac which could not be made without lacquer. To get around the shellac shortage, labels as Capitol bought up stocks of older records, millions upon millions of them, crushed them and melted them down to be pressed into new recordings. By war’s end, Capitol Records sold an astonishing 40 million records! That should give one an idea of how many old recordings were destroyed. How many might be by various early swing bands that are now all but lost to us today is unknown but there were likely a significant number likely in the thousands.
Between 1929 and 1945, much of America’s jazz culture and history was irretrievably lost. The worst part is that we don’t even know enough to miss what we have lost—like losing a million dollars you never knew you had. Much the same thing happened to the original blues artists. We only have their recordings today because people went through the trouble of canvassing black neighborhoods door-to-door (sometimes at great personal risk) to buy old blues records from the occupants four and five decades after the fact. At best, only one in 20 had anything to sell and much of it was not in the best condition. Sometimes a record would be discovered that no one had heard of before but would be unplayable due to years of being used as a placemat for a flowerpot of some such similar thing. What old blues recordings we have today probably represent no more than a hundredth of what was actually released to the public. We can assume the same is true of jazz.
So we must be cognizant of the fact that any history of jazz and the Swing Era in particular is sketchy and arguable. That we cannot credit all the bands who played a role in spreading the gospel of swing around the country, and ultimately the world, is unfortunate but that, as they say, is how it is.
August 21, 1935 – Benny Goodman and band opened at the Palomar Ballroom on Vermont Avenue between Second and Third in Los Angeles with his band that included Gene Krupa on drums, Harry Goodman (Benny’s brother) on bass, Frank Froeba on piano, George Van Eps on guitar and nine horn-players including Pee Wee Erwin (trumpet) and Toots Mondello (alto sax). The singer was Helen Ward. Goodman had the band play a straight safe set unwilling to jump into the deep end of the pool so to speak. The reception was lukewarm. The crowd had heard the frenetic recordings and performances of the band on the radio and they expected something less restrained. After the first set ended either the band’s manager or Krupa (sources vary but was probably Krupa) told Goodman, “If we’re gonna die, Benny, let’s die playing our own thing!” Goodman knew he was right and pulled out the stops. When the band hit the stage for part two they attacked the audience with the craziest music anyone had ever heard and the crowd went crazy. This is now remembered as the birth of swing.
Although calling this concert the birth of swing is a bit of an overstatement, there is some truth to it. It definitely put swing on the map where it would stay for two decades. But swing didn’t jump out and present itself to the world that night. It was a while in coming. Goodman was perhaps its greatest ambassador but he was definitely not the innovator.
Goodman was born the ninth of 12 children in Chicago to Jewish parents who immigrated from the Russian Empire. Goodman was 10 when he began taking clarinet lessons at the synagogue and then moved to other teachers including classical training with Franz Schoepp. He became interested in jazz and listened to the great New Orleans clarinet masters as Jimmy Noone, Johnny Dodds and the mentally ill genius Leon Roppolo. Goodman had such a natural talent on the clarinet that he was playing professionally with the legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke in 1923 at the age of 14! He joined Ben Pollack’s band—the top-rated band in Chicago—in 1925 and recorded with them the following year, his first recordings. Benny’s brother, Harry, was also doing well as a jazz bassist and they usually played together.
In December of that year, David Goodman, Benny’s father, was killed in Chicago in a street accident. Benny had been trying for some time to get his father to retire saying that he and Harry were making enough money to see that he would be comfortable but David refused to consider it. Benny always regretted that his father did not live long enough to see his and Harry’s success and told people his father’s death was the bitterest blow to his family.
The Goodman brothers left for New York and appeared together and separately on a spate of projects up to 1934 including recordings and performances with Glenn Miller, Joe Venuti and Ted Lewis. During the Depression, Goodman purchased the arrangements and songbooks of the great Fletcher Henderson who led the hottest black band in Harlem. Henderson, a genius for arrangements but a poor bandleader, was in deep financial straights and badly needed the money and eagerly accepted Goodman’s help. Henderson’s orchestra, who had argued with leader over the lack of payment, had disbanded during this time so Goodman also hired many of them—the finest jazz musicians the world has ever seen—to train up his own players who were lacking the proper chops.
Fully trained by Henderson’s band and using his arrangements, the Goodman band auditioned for a dance music radio program called “Let’s Dance” and was one of three bands to make the cut. It was a huge break. The program aired for three hours per broadcast and Goodman’s time slot was such that people on the East Coast usually tuned out but the West Coast audience loved it. The radio program was sponsored by Nabisco which was suddenly paralyzed by a strike forcing the program to shut down. Goodman had nothing else going so he took his band on tour but found the reception poor as most people had no idea who he was—until he got to the West Coast where he had been a huge attraction on the “Let’s Dance” program. With his band ready to split on him, Goodman landed a gig at the Palomar Ballroom and the rest is history.