Benny Goodman
Swing, Brother, Swing
First it was Benny Goodman, then it was everyone, and the kids jitterbugging in the theatre aisles. Among other things, though hardly most important, it was the first time that outsiders began to concern themselves about the sociological and psychological implications of jazz (why did everyone flock around the bandstands? What made those ‘teen-age dancers carry on like that?) Swing provoked a pretty extreme set of reactions, it’s true, but one big reason it was all so noticeable was that this was the first time a form of jazz had a whole broad sweep of the country, rather than any one limited area, as its base of operations.
As suggested there it was all about recordings and coast to coast radio, and the bands within bands, and the stars that were made out of Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Ziggy Elman, Harry James and Lionel Hampton, and the new arrangements Fletcher Henderson penned for Goodman of his old hits from the ’20s and early ’30s, and the Ben Pollock band that Goodman had inherited, and the driving beat that Krupa had learned from Pollock the drummer who kind of changed everything until Krupa took it just that bit further, which got those kids dancing in the aisles, and buying the records. It was new, it was different, it was music that radiated power and professionalism. It was a music that America went to war with.
