小简介
村上眼中的Benny Goodman
从现在的观点来看，“King of Swing”Benny Goodman其实是很保守的，而且还带有擅长做生意的音乐家形象，但是过去白人、黑人音乐家不在同一个乐团并肩同台演出的音乐界默契，其实也就是由他断然打破的。他找钟琴手Lionel Hampton、钢琴手Teddy Wilson、吉他手Charlie Christian加入。周围的人对这很有意见，他也不在乎。不管怎么说，Goodman就是这么忠于音乐的人。只要乐器出来的声音棒，而且能愉快的摇摆的话，恐怕半人鱼他都会录用的吧。
对Goodman来说，与其看肤色，不如募集每个时代最优秀的音乐家，迎接新的气息，让自己的乐团成为经常站在第一线上的刺激性存在，才是他最重视的优先事项。虽然，在多年以后身边拥有像Zoot Sims和Phil Woods等纯粹的现代主义者时，竟然连他都无法收拾，而引起一大骚动。贝斯手Bill Crow以这天翻地覆的纷乱始末为经纬所写的中叙述得很详细。虽然这么说，但只要一听这折衷式的热闹乐团所留下的唱片，还是能听到相当魅力十足的演奏，因此Goodman的意图也绝对没有错。
只是话虽如此，一提到Benny Goodman，从1930年代后半到40年代所录的许多演奏名盘唱片，还是深深印在我们脑子里。在这黄金时代Goodman所录的唱片要说任何一首都棒，也真是这样。不过年轻天才Eddie Sauter（当时才二十五岁左右）为Goodman所写的编曲演奏出来，有一种其他曲子所没有的独特崭新感。和过去“King of Swing”的路线又有一点不同的味道，令人感觉到一种年轻的魅力。Goodman甜美而摇摆式的资质，和Eddie Sauter几分硬质而带有知性的味道，巧妙融合，产生质感很高而富有娱乐性的音乐。
一代大师Goodman或许也受到Eddie Sauter旺盛企图心的编曲刺激吧，例如在里的单簧管独奏，表现相当尖锐而现代色彩浓厚，其中含有“这可不能说是只有轻松甜美的娱乐爵士乐噢”的气魄。Goodman当时也还相当年轻，而且自有他的饥渴。当然热情洋溢著名的“卡内基厅”的现场演奏盘固然很棒，不过也有听腻的地方。这时候不妨听听这张“Benny Goodman Presents Eddie Sauter Arrangements”。
Benny Goodman所演奏的Eddie Sauter Arrangements，很遗憾（或者应该说是当然的吧）并没有受到普遍的欢迎，不过后来Eddie Sauter和Stan Getz合作的“Focus”可以说成为造型美极致的杰出作品公开于世。
Benny Goodman was the first celebrated bandleader of the Swing Era, dubbed The King of Swing, his popular emergence marking the beginning of the era. He was an accomplished clarinetist whose distinctive playing gave an identity both to his big band and to the smaller units he led simultaneously. The most popular figure of the first few years of the Swing Era, he continued to perform until his death 50 years later.
Goodman was the son of Russian immigrants David Goodman, a tailor, and Dora Rezinsky Goodman. He first began taking clarinet lessons at ten at a synagogue, after which he joined the band at Hull House, a settlement home. He made his professional debut at 12 and dropped out of high school at 14 to become a musician. At 16, in August 1925, he joined the Ben Pollack band, with which he made his first released band recordings in December 1926. His first recordings under his own name were made in January 1928. At 20, in September 1929, he left Pollack to settle in New York and work as a freelance musician, working at recording sessions, radio dates, and in the pit bands of Broadway musicals. He also made recordings under his own name with pickup bands, first reaching the charts with Hes Not Worth Your Tears (vocal by Scrappy Lambert) on Melotone Records in January 1931. He signed to Columbia Records in the fall of 1934 and reached the Top Ten in early 1934 with Aint Cha Glad? (vocal by Jack Teagarden), Riffin the Scotch (vocal by Billie Holiday), and Ol Pappy (vocal by Mildred Bailey), and in the spring with I Aint Lazy, Im Just Dreamin (vocal by Jack Teagarden).
These record successes and an offer to perform at Billy Roses Music Hall inspired Goodman to organize a permanent performing orchestra, which gave its first performance on June 1, 1934. His instrumental recording of Moon Glow hit number one in July, and he scored two more Top Ten hits in the fall with the instrumentals Take My Word and Bugle Call Rag. After a four-and-a-half-month stay at the Music Hall, he was signed for the Saturday night Lets Dance program on NBC radio, playing the last hour of the three-hour show. During the six months he spent on the show, he scored another six Top Ten hits on Columbia, then switched to RCA Victor, for which he recorded five more Top Ten hits by the end of the year.
After leaving Lets Dance, Goodman undertook a national tour in the summer of 1935. It was not particularly successful until he reached the West Coast, where his segment of Lets Dance had been heard three hours earlier than on the East Coast. His performance at the Palomar Ballroom near Los Angeles on August 21, 1935, was a spectacular success, remembered as the date on which the Swing Era began. He moved on to a six-month residency at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, beginning in November. He scored 15 Top Ten hits in 1936, including the chart-toppers Its Been So Long, Goody-Goody, The Glory of Love, These Foolish Things Remind Me of You, and You Turned the Tables on Me (all vocals by Helen Ward). He became the host of the radio series The Camel Caravan, which ran until the end of 1939, and in October 1936, the orchestra made its film debut in The Big Broadcast of 1937. The same month, Goodman began a residency at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York.
Goodmans next number one hit, in February 1937, featured Ella Fitzgerald on vocals and was the bands first hit with new trumpeter Harry James. It was also the first of six Top Ten hits during the year, including the chart-topping This Years Kisses (vocal by Margaret McCrae). In December, the band appeared in another film, Hollywood Hotel. The peak of Goodmans renown in the 1930s came on January 16, 1938, when he performed a concert at Carnegie Hall, but he went on to score 14 Top Ten hits during the year, among them the number ones Dont Be That Way (an instrumental) and I Let a Song Go out of My Heart (vocal by Martha Tilton), as well as the thrilling instrumental Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing), which later was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
By 1939, Goodman had lost such major instrumentalists as Gene Krupa and Harry James, who left to found their own bands, and he faced significant competition from newly emerged bandleaders such as Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. But he still managed to score eight Top Ten hits during the year, including the chart-topper And the Angels Sing (vocal by Martha Tilton), another inductee to the Grammy Hall of Fame. He returned to Columbia Records in the fall. In November, he appeared in the Broadway musical Swingin the Dream, leading a sextet. The show was short-lived, but it provided him with the song Darn That Dream (vocal by Mildred Bailey), which hit number one for him in March 1940. It was the first of only three Top Ten hits he scored in 1940, his progress slowed by illness; in July he disbanded temporarily and underwent surgery for a slipped disk, not reorganizing until October. He scored two Top Ten hits in 1941, one of which was the chart-topper Therell Be Some Changes Made (vocal by Louise Tobin), and he returned to radio with his own show. Among his three Top Ten hits in 1942 were the number ones Somebody Else Is Taking My Place (vocal by Peggy Lee) and the instrumental Jersey Bounce. He also appeared in the film Syncopation, released in May.
American entry into World War II and the onset of the recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians in August 1942 made things difficult for all performers. Goodman managed to score a couple of Top Ten hits, including the number one Taking a Chance on Love (vocal by Helen Forrest), in 1943, drawn from material recorded before the start of the ban. And he used his free time to work in films, appearing in three during the year: The Powers Girl (January), Stage Door Canteen (July), and The Gangs All Here (December).
Goodman disbanded in March 1944. He appeared in the film Sweet and Low-Down in September and played with a quintet in the Broadway revue Seven Lively Arts, which opened December 7 and ran 182 performances. Meanwhile, the musicians union strike was settled, freeing him to go back into the recording studio. In April 1945, his compilation album Hot Jazz reached the Top Ten on the newly instituted album charts. He reorganized his big band and scored three Top Ten hits during the year, among them Gotta Be This or That (vocal by Benny Goodman), which just missed hitting number one. Symphony (vocal by Liza Morrow) also came close to hitting number one in early 1946, and Benny Goodman Sextet Session did hit number one on the album charts in May 1946. Goodman hosted a radio series with Victor Borge in 1946-1947, and he continued to record, switching to Capitol Records. He appeared in the film A Song Is Born in October 1948 and meanwhile experimented with bebop in his big band. But in December 1949, he disbanded, though he continued to organize groups on a temporary basis for tours and recording sessions.
If popular music had largely passed Goodman by as of 1950, his audience was not tired of listening to his vintage music. He discovered a recording that had been made of his 1938 Carnegie Hall concert and Columbia Records released it on LP in November 1950 as Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, Vol. 1 & 2. It spent a year in the charts, becoming the best-selling jazz album ever up to that time, and was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. A follow-up album of airchecks, Benny Goodman 1937-1938: Jazz Concert No. 2, hit number one in December 1952. The rise of the high fidelity 12 LP led Goodman to re-record his hits for the Capitol album B.G. in Hi-Fi, which reached the Top Ten in March 1955. A year later, he had another Top Ten album of re-recordings with the soundtrack album for his film biography, The Benny Goodman Story, in which he was portrayed by Steve Allen but dubbed in his own playing.
After a tour of the Far East in 1956-1957, Goodman increasingly performed overseas. His 1962 tour of the U.S.S.R. resulted in the chart album Benny Goodman in Moscow. In 1963, RCA Victor staged a studio reunion of the Benny Goodman Quartet of the 1930s, featuring Goodman, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton. The result was the 1964 chart album Together Again! Goodman recorded less frequently in his later years, though he reached the charts in 1971 with Benny Goodman Today, recorded live in Stockholm. His last album to be released before his death from a heart attack at 77 was Lets Dance, a television soundtrack, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band.
Goodmans lengthy career and his popular success especially in the 1930s and 40s has resulted in an enormous catalog. His major recordings are on Columbia and RCA Victor, but Music Masters has put out a series of archival discs from his personal collection, and many small labels have issued airchecks. The recordings continue to demonstrate Goodmans remarkable talents as an instrumentalist and as a bandleader.