Klarinet Archive - Posting 000167.txt from 1998/05

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Benny Goodman as Mr. Sunshine?
Date: Tue, 5 May 1998 16:03:33 -0400

>I personally held Benny Goodman's Selmer clarinet in my hands in
>1944 when he was playing with his sextet at a club in NY. I was
>a kid of 12 and my brother was going into the navy so my family
>took us to the club 400 to hear Goodman. He put his clarinet on
>the piano during a break, and I went up to look at it. He said,
>"Hey kid. Leave that clarinet alone." and I told him that I just wanted
>to see what kind it was. He let me pick it up.

That as actually gracious of him, given what you say below....

>Years later I played with Goodman when he did the Weber concerto
>with the Connecticut Symphony. I was very much in awe of him,
>and he behaved like a schmuck. I was disappointed. Maybe he had
>a bad day.

I read an interview with Buddy De Franco (it was from a website, I just
wish I remembered WHERE!) in which he said outright that Goodman was
obsessed with the clarinet to the exclusion of all else, and was both cold
and perfunctory in his dealings with other people. De Franco told about
Goodman hiring a sax player for his big band. While the guy was warming
up, Goodman listened, walked over and said "I'm sorry, but I don't think
this is going to work out." He paid the sax player for an evening and
fired him on the spot. The musician wasn't PLAYING anything with the band,
he was just doing scales or whatever he did. So perhaps Goodman behaved
like a schmuck all the time, which suggests that he passed the Duck (or
Schmuck) Test, and really WAS one.

But boy...could he play hell out of that horn....

Ken

Kenneth Wolman Information Technology Morgan Stanley Inc.
750 Seventh Avenue New York, NY 212-762-1685
My unpaid life: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1649
"I only wish I could write with both hands, so as not to forget
one thing while I am saying another." -- St. Teresa of Avila

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