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N0KFQ > TODAY 21.08.15 16:00l 61 Lines 3038 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 64433_N0KFQ
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Subj: Today in History - Aug 21
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 150821/1500Z 64433@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.63
1935
The Swing Era begins with Benny Goodman's triumphant Palomar
Ballroom performance
The sound of swing, which utterly dominated the American
popular-music scene in the late 1930s and early 1940s, instantly
evokes images of tuxedo-clad Big Bands and dance floors crowded
with exuberant jitterbugs dancing the Shag and the Lindy Hop.
While the roots of swing music clearly lie in earlier forms of
jazz_and particularly in African-American jazz performance
styles_swing as we know it may just have been born at a specific
time and in a specific place, with an electric performance by one
particular Big Band for one particularly enthusiastic audience.
The time and place was August 21, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom
in Los Angeles, California, where Benny Goodman and his band
emphatically opened the Swing Era with an exuberant performance
witnessed by thousands of young fans in the live audience and
millions more tuning in to a live radio broadcast.
Benny Goodman had been a successful featured soloist in various
prominent bands and the leader of his own trio and big band for
several years before making his breakthrough at Palomar. The
ninth of 12 children in a large Jewish family in Chicago, Goodman
had been sent by his father at the age of 10 in 1919 to the local
synagogue for clarinet lessons in the hopes that a music career
might provide him a way out of poverty. By his early teens,
Goodman had proven his father correct by becoming a working
professional, and by 24, he was successful enough to land his
band a regular gig on a weekly radio program broadcast out of New
York City called Let's Dance. It was there that Goodman began
performing "hot" arrangements by African-American bandleader
Fletcher Henderson_arrangements that departed from the more
romantic style of the day by employing loose, upbeat, syncopated
rhythms that had been common in African-American jazz ensembles
for years. Goodman's band would often appear well past midnight,
New York time, on Let's Dance. And while this limited their
exposure on the East Coast, Goodman would soon discover a huge
new fan base when he took his group west to California.
Already familiar with Benny Goodman's exciting new style from his
Friday night radio appearances, a huge crowd of young people
turned out for his Palomar Ballroom debut on this day in 1935. It
was a promising start to an engagement Goodman hoped would
salvage a summer tour otherwise judged a failure. But Goodman
stuck to relatively staid, stock arrangements during the first
part of that night's show, and he began to lose the young crowd.
Before their return from the first intermission, the band's
drummer, Gene Krupa, is said to have urged Goodman, "If we're
gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing." It was at
that point that Benny Goodman famously pulled out Henderson's
arrangements along with all the stops on his talented orchestra,
to the crowd's immense delight.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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