Klarinet Archive - Posting 000092.txt from 1994/05

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: In Memory of Benny Goodman
Date: Wed, 4 May 1994 16:27:33 -0400

(From The Clarinet, Fall, 1986)

I said that I would dig out the article I did when Benny Goodman
died and here it is. The story happened this way, too:

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World War II was being fought. I think I was 12 years old. It's hard to
remember. At 5 a.m. I took the 30-minute bus ride from Paterson, NJ to
New York City, walked from the bus terminal to the Paramount Theatre, an
enormous, art-deco monstrosity, and got in line at 6 a.m. to buy my tickets
when the box office opened two hours later. The police did not permit
the ticket line to start forming earlier than that. Barriers were erected
that caused us to hug the walls instead of blocking the sidewalk. The line
went down 44th Street from Broadway, bent around the corner at 8th Avenue
and continued uptown for a million miles. I was in the front of the line.
An aggressive, short kid who plays the clarinet can get to the front of
any adult line anyehwere in the world, but you have to be short.

If you were not in line by 6 in the morning, you would never get in for
the 9 a.m. movie which was, in turn, followed by the first of five or
six daily live shows alternating with the movie. They were invariably
big band spectacles which started around 10:30. The reason why I
was at the Paramount that particular day was because Benny Goodman
was playing there IN PERSON and I wanted to see and hear him live!

For a fee I would hold someone's place in line to allow them a break for
coffee. My mother did not believe in people under 16 drinking coffee
so I really cleaned up. (Where do mother's ever come up with such
arbitrary, capricious, and bizarre rules?) I don't remember if it was
summertime, or if I was playing hookey, or if it was inter-session
vacation, or what. It's all a haze. But I remember Benny Goodman. Oh
boy, do I remember Benny Goodman!

Most of the attendees tried to get aisle seats between rows 5 and 20. Not
me. I wanted the 7th seat left of center in row 1. (I had been to
the Paramount Theatre before and knew the ropes.) While row 1 was a
terrible place from which to see either the live show or the movie,
it was, paradoxically, perfect for what I had in mind.

The live show at the Paramount always began with the raising of the
orchestra pit, the musicians in place and playing during their
ascent into the audience's view. I had come to look into that pit
as the artists set up -- out of sight of everyone else in the
audience except those in row 1 -- before the live show began. And the
7th seat left of center was the seat nearest to the pit entrance door that
all the players used. For those 15 minutes, I could look at Benny
Goodman all by myself. I did not have to share him or the band
with anyone. It was during those 15 minutes that I was alive. The
rest of the time was just waiting.

The film portion of the show consisted of a "Movietone News," "Selected
Short Subjects," and then some turkey of a film where either Robert
Taylor saved the world from the Nazi horde or John Wayne prevented
an assault on American womanhood from the yellow peril. I forget.
Besides, it was almost impossible to see the screen from the first
row of the Paramount. The angle of perspective was too steep. (The
scene of Benny Goodman's Paramount Theatre success as seen in one of
Hollywood's worst biographical movies, The Benny Goodman Story, shows
the Paramount as a rather small theatre with great lines of signt from
all rows. Don't believe it. The Dallas Cowboys could have played
the Minnesota Vikings in that theatre.)

As everyone else looked at the enemies of America being destroyed in
the movie's final scenes, my magic time began. I would lean forward,
look over the rail and there, just a few feet below me, was Gene
Krupa, perhaps, or Teddy Wilson or Peggy Lee. Then, a few minutes
before showtime, Benny Goodman would come in with his Selmer
clarinet tucked under his arm, just like that, as casual as could
be. And he just carried it under his arm like a salami. I imitated
him for years by carrying my clarinet that way.

When everyone was in place and the movie over, the lights went up and the
pit began its slow ascent. To the tune "Let's Dance" the stage and its
players rose until the full glare of the spotlights were on them. But
before that happened I was at eye level with Benny for an instant. Then,
suddenly, he looked at me. He actually LOOKED AT ME!!! And the
instant passed. The stage continued its upward rise and the show began.
And while I could not see the show, I could hear it all quite clearly.
I could hear Benny and Gene Krupa do their drum/clarinet duet in Sing!
Sing! Sing! I could hear Benny, Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and
Gene Krupa do Moonglow as a quartet.

Benny talked a little and, on occasion, he even sang. It wasn't a vocal
solo or anything like that. He had a terrible voice. It was a tune
where the whole band sang and Benny sang, too, but he was closer to
the mike than anyone else so I heard him better. Peggy Lee sang,
in a voice dripping with sexual innuendo, final syllables clipped,
hands on hips, "You had plenty money, 1922. You let other women make
a fool of you."

Benny puntuated her singing with ornaments that were cleverly conceived,
brilliantly supportive of her artisty, and extraordinarily well executed. (If
only my ornaments in the Mozart Quintet were half as imaginative.) And I sat
and listened, thinking of the instant that Benny had looked at me, while
waiting for the show to get over so the orchestra would begin its descent.

Then maybe he would look at me again. Maybe he would even talk to me and say,
"Hi kid. Enjoy the show?" Maybe he would ask me if I played the clarinet and
I could tell him that I did play, though not as fast as he. And I would tell
him about my metal clarinet and how I tried to play licks just like he did, but
it didn't come out the same way as when he would do it. And maybe he would
tell me the secret of how to make it come out right. And maybe ...

But when the show was over and the pit began its descent, Benny was off to the
side talking to Teddy Wilson and did not see me staring at him with eyes like
laser beams. That didn't matter too much because I stayed there the entire day
for every show. But he never looked at me again.

Benny Goodman died yesterday (dated from the writing of this reminiscence) and
with him goes this magic moment of my childhood. Years later I met and played
with him. He was soloist with an orchestra of which I was a member and we
chatted briefly. I was still in awe of him.

Today I have become somewhat jaded. A four-hour stint playing basset horn in
Strauss' Frau Ohne Schatten is enough to make the performance of music
something less than a joyous experience. It tires you. It jades you. I have
a nice family, a big house, a bunch of clarinets, five cars, I play a lot of
Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky, and Strauss. I have a
well-constructed portfolio and a very sweet life. But no other life experience
has ever matched that magic instant when I was a child and Benny Goodman looked
at me as the stage rose in the Paramount Theatre in New York City.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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