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Count Basie, Chick Webb would argue with Goodman being the King of Swing. Even Krupa admitted it when Chick Webb blew them off the stage.
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01-31-2021 06:49 PM
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Benny Goodman is not the King of Swing because his band won or lost some so-called battle in some club on a particular night. He had the whole package, musicianship, perseverance, the ability to choose sidemen, arrangers and singers, and to pilot the whole ship around the country, gig after gig, dance after dance, recording session after session. And, whether through shrewd calculation or blind luck (you need some luck to be King), he came upon the perfect combination of swing, sweetness, virtuosity, simplicity, entertainment, choreography and personality to give the great mass of Americans exactly what they wanted when they wanted it.
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Well I said I won’t argue with you. He wasn’t bestowed necessarily because he fully deserved it. Yes he had huge crowds. But so did Basie and Webb and had they had the support that Goodman had they would have had an audience share as large.
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Basie, of course was also jazz royalty (The Count!) and an amazing band leader and, while no one can dispute Benny’s crown, The Duke was always my personal favorite, but I’m afraid he was too sophisticated for the masses, and only became more so over time.
Artistically, I don’t think any big band ever surpassed this:
Duke Ellington Masterpieces - YouTube
Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Don’t sleep on Lunceford though
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Great band, indeed - I love Eddie Durham's guitar playing with that group.
Originally Posted by christianm77
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Benny Goodman, a white male, captivates white America in the 30’s-40’s. And the accomplishment is what, best ever to an all white crowd? You would have thought Goodman had invented jazz.
The issue is during the times of Goodman many black musicians couldn’t get a gig based on their race. That fact contributed to some resentment towards white players.
Fact is, everything changes. Music moved in popularity based upon youth and the times. Jazz wasn’t supposed to continue to be the most popular music. You can’t compare the 40’s to the 60’s. Doing so is an unreasonable expectation of music popularity to be the same.
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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'Worship Jazz'
Could be a money-maker.
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Originally Posted by wintermoon
And by 1950 Swing bands were pretty much done. You see, music simply changes with trends. And by mid 1950 the popularity of rock, a brand new thing which appealed to youth, dramatically changed things, another change in trends.
So the popularity of jazz didn’t stand a chance with youth, for they had already migrated to rock. I don’t buy the narrative that jazz moving away from dance music had anything to do with the popularity of jazz and its failing. Times had simply changed.
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
Pretty dominant on the charts
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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Originally Posted by jameslovestal
EDIT: Come to think of it, I don't remember anyone dancing to Rubber Soul.
Rock dancing didn't stop per se, it just got weird. "Ate up" is what we used to call druggies.Last edited by Donplaysguitar; 02-01-2021 at 08:25 PM.
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Originally Posted by jameslovestal
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Originally Posted by Lobomov
Hits today. Now that’s hilarious.
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Originally Posted by jameslovestal
All we know about that period is what we’ve read in history books.
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
That's cool
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Arguing about popular music seems rather pointless to me. It's pop, after all. It's planned and architected to be temporal, faddish even. It's meant to make a buck, and that is the measure of success (or at least records sold which translates to bucks). "So and so has "n" number of platinum record$ or gold record$, etc., etc.
And dance worthy? Well, contemporary popular dancing has always been part of the mating ritual of the young. That's also temporal, one generation at a time, maybe even one year at a time. Not meant to last.
So, when some pop music turns out to have lasting artistic appeal that's a bonus, not a requirement.
Or so it seems to me.
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
Early years
"Playing music was a great escape for me from the poverty."
Goodman, in a 1975 interview
Goodman was the ninth of twelve children born to poor Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, David Goodman (1873–1926), came to the United States in 1892 from Warsaw in partitioned Poland and became a tailor. His mother, Dora Grisinsky,[1] (1873–1964), came from Kovno. They met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Goodman's birth.
With little income and a large family, they moved to the Maxwell Street neighborhood, an overcrowded slum near railroad yards and factories that was populated by German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Scandinavian, and Jewish immigrants.
Money was a constant problem. On Sundays, his father took the children to free band concerts in Douglass Park, which was the first time Goodman experienced live professional performances. To give his children some skills and an appreciation for music, his father enrolled ten-year-old Goodman and two of his brothers in music lessons, from 1919, at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue and Benny received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinettist and Chicago Symphony member, Franz Schoepp. During the next year Goodman joined the boys club band at Hull House, where he received lessons from director James Sylvester.
By joining the band, he was entitled to spend two weeks at a summer camp near Chicago. It was the only time he could get away from his bleak neighborhood. At 13, he got his first union card. He performed on Lake Michigan excursion boats, and in 1923 played at Guyon’s Paradise, a local dance hall.
When he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar. His father's death was "the saddest thing that ever happened in our family", Goodman said.
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Originally Posted by Donplaysguitar
Last edited by Lobomov; 02-02-2021 at 11:26 AM.
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Originally Posted by Lobomov
Anyway, I think 2born's point was that the Jay-z and Beyonce stuff, like so much oher stuff out there these days, is crap, or maybe I misunderstood him. If true, then it kind of goes to what I was saying about pop in general. Designed to be temporal, designed to generate cash.
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I don't think I'd like jazz as much if it was widely popular. Its kind of a special thing now, I meet someone who likes jazz and we have a bond, something in common.
Pop music isn't like that. It'd be like meeting someone and finding out they like pizza and being like "omg, thats AMAZING, I love pizza too!"
16" 1920s/30s L5
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