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DEDICATION

For my brother Bob.

This is a supplement to:

Benny Goodman – The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert.

By Jon Hancock.

ISBN 978-0-9562404-0-8

Available to download from:

www.Prancingfish.com

Text Copyright © 2016 Jon Hancock.

Jon@BG1938.com

Illustrations copyrighted as marked.

First published in the UK in 2016

by Prancing Fish Publishing Ltd.

The information in this booklet is true and complete to the best of our knowledge.

All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the publisher, who

also disclaims any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific

details.

All rights reserved.

Version 1.3

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Update BENNY GOODMAN

Introduction

C ollecting together evidenced facts for any research of this type is a

time consuming endeavour. It was always my goal to present an

accurate depiction of the events that took place in those months

leading up to Benny Goodman’s famous concert and the concert

itself. An enormous amount had been written about this concert that we love

so much, but it seemed to me that the same few stories were being repeated

over and over. Like so many people, that concert

grabbed hold of me when I first heard it in the late 1950’s

and it won’t let me go. The music still enchants. Once

you embark on this type of thing it’s difficult to stop and

ever since my book was published in 2009, I have

continued to scour archives, books and magazines for

‘new’ material.

Over the last few years I have received hundreds of emails

from Goodman fans located all over the world, many of

whom have told me versions of the same touching story,

“My Dad played me the records when I was a kid and I

have loved them ever since”. I am always delighted to

hear from fans of Benny Goodman and some true nuggets

of information have come from these Goodmanites - I

thank you all once again. It has been great fun and I

have made some very good friends along the way.

Together we have increased the sum of knowledge on this

remarkable event.

Benny was a great clarinet player, probably the best of his

era, but you need more than that to be successful. To

build on his early successes, Benny had assembled a crack

team of publicity and media experts to escort him, like

Sherpas on to the very pinnacle of his career. The Goodman organisation was

a family affair too. In those days, Benny’s sister Ethel was the grand ringmaster

for the Goodman orchestra. She made sure that the band were fed and

watered and she also supervised the running of the accounts, Ethel handled all

of the money that came in and went out. It takes a huge amount of stamina

The Famous 1938

CARNEGIE HALL JAZZ CONCERT

There are still a few

copies available!

www.BG1938.com

The LP cover is reproduced courtesy of Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

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to keep up the phenomenal work rate that swing bands of the 1930’s

used to achieve. The number of performances they gave was far

greater than those listed in the discographies, sometimes five or 6

shows a day. That is almost superhuman. It is no wonder that there

were so many personnel changes in those heady days.

Keeping track of all this is challenging, but fun. It is so rewarding to

find a long forgotten snippet lurking on page 9 of an obscure local

paper or magazine and slotting it neatly into the jigsaw of orphaned

cuttings and stories that I keep filed away, just in case.

Here, I have tried to piece together all of the ‘new’ material in

chronological order and publish it as an update to my book. I am

assuming that you have read the book but it is not essential for your

enjoyment of this missive. One day I might put it all together as a

glossy ‘deluxe’ edition of the book, possibly with a CD too, but that’s

an expensive business! I might just launch it as an ‘e-book’. In the

meantime time, I hope you will enjoy these odds and ends which I

think will help us to understand what was happening in the kingdom

of swing all those years ago.

My research would not have been possible without the help of many

friends and acquaintances who have freely offered their expertise

over the last few years to help make this possible. There will be some

who I have unintentionally missed, but I am indebted to: George

Avakian, Fred Cains, David Jessup, Brooks Tegler, Gino Francesconi,

Earl Caustin, Carl Hallström, Ricky Riccardi, Fernando Ortiz de Urbina,

Doug Pomeroy, John McDonough, Arthur Newman, Peter Manders,

Mark Cantor and also Loren Schoenberg for giving me access to

Ross Firestone’s interview recording with Bill Savory. My family

deserve a mention too for coping with my lunacy!

L et us begun in July 1937, here is a little more on the subject of the

illusive ‘Wynn’ Nathanson as he joins the Tom Fizdale agency.

Research for my book lead me to all sorts of places but throughout the

course of my investigations, I could un-earth precious little about the

famed publicity agent Wynn Nathanson. Irving Kolodin’s liner notes tell us that

it was Nathanson who came up with the idea of staging a swing concert in

Carnegie Hall featuring Goodman’s band. I started to wonder whether

Nathanson ever existed, perhaps just a made-up character, invented to

embellish a good story? These days, there is a lot more material available to

researchers and I made a small breakthrough by establishing that his Christian

name was in fact Irwin. Armed with this information I was quickly able to find

out a little more. Nathanson joined the Tom Fizdale Agency in the summer of

1937. In October 1937, Fizdale merged its business with the Robert Taplinger

Agency and absorbed a huge portfolio of nationally famous clients, a list which

January 16, 1938 - The

Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

I’m very much looking

forward to the demo!

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included Benny Goodman. The newly formed Tom Fizdale Inc. moved into the

Taplinger office in New York. They also had offices in Hollywood, Chicago and

London, from where they worked their publicity magic. So, in late November

1937, when Nathanson suggested taking Goodman into Carnegie Hall, he had

only been working with Goodman for barely a month. He certainly made his

mark early! Nathanson went on to head the agency and in 1947, Fizdale

changed its name to Win Nathanson and Associates. It seems Nathanson

retired from the publicity business early to go back to college to study

archaeology.

I started research in earnest on my book in around 2005. In the intervening

years, I have been able to understand better the relationship between the key

people who worked on Goodman’s first Carnegie Hall concert. A short list of

these people would include: Win Nathanson, Savington Crampton, Bill

Goodwin, Sol Hurok, Willard Allexander and John Hammond. I was correct in

saying that Crampton played a major role in developing Goodman’s on-air

presence. He was a radio producer at the William Esty Agency - who held the

Camel cigarettes account - and it was Crampton who produced the Camel

Caravan Radio shows. Bill Goodwin, the Master of Ceremonies we hear on

the Camel shows, had been a CBS Hollywood announcer and producer in his

own right. Bill Goodwin had been hired by The Esty Agency as assistant to

Crampton in July 1937. It was the Esty Agency who later sponsored the

Carnegie Hall concert and Crampton produced it. The impresario Sol Hurok

and his publicist Gerald Goode had the reputation and contacts to open the

doors of Carnegie Hall to the Goodman band. Hurok also liaised with Willard

Alexander, Benny’s manager at the MCA booking agency. John Hammond

was involved with the programme notes and proposed the inclusion of guest

musicians from the Basie and Ellington bands.

August 3 1937 – Camel Caravan rehearsals.

The first few Swing School shows were broadcast from California where the

Goodman band were busy filming Hollywood Hotel. That was a heavy

schedule, an 8 o’clock start at the Warner Brothers studio for the first camera

call (It was Ethel’s job to get them there on time.) and then, after a day in the

film studios, they decamped en masse and moved to the Palomar Ballroom for

the evening, they were performing and broadcasting 5 nights a week until 1.00

in the morning.

In August 1937, Screen & Radio Weekly, a Sunday supplement magazine,

published an unusual account of a rehearsal for an early Camel Caravan

Swing School which aired on August 3rd. Savington Crampton had recently

been put in charge of Esty’s Hollywood offices, so he was personally able to

lead the production of those early programmes. Crampton’s authority is clear

in this article. Martha Tilton and Bill Goodwin also lived in California and they

were friends before Tilton became Goodman’s vocalist. It was Goodwin who

suggested that she audition for Goodman. Her first Swing School was on

August 24 1937 where she was affectionately referred to as ‘our pet freshman’.

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There is an engaging account of Martha’s audition with Goodman in the

August 1938 issue of ‘Love and Romance’ magazine.

August 1937

Savington Crampton hired James Bloodworth as scriptwriter for the Swing

School. Bloodworth went on to be a well-known screen writer, in later years he

also played some minor roles on screen.

November 11 1937 - LIFE magazine

In response to the photo-article in Life Magazine the week before, Goodman

wrote a letter to the magazine with a correction about Teddy Wilson and Lionel

Hampton being members of only the Quartet and not the full band. They also

published an autographed, hand written manuscript page of Harry James’

tribute to the magazine, ‘Life Goes to a Party’. I wonder where that is now?!

December 7 1937 – Movie News Daily

Martha Tilton completed work on her first film, a short for Columbia entitled

‘Topper’ in which Martha appears. The film starred Cary Grant and

Constance Bennett. Martha appeared briefly with her vocal group Three Hits

and a Miss. She also dubbed some of the singing voice-overs.

How about this for hype!-

Sol Hurok’s publicity flyer

for the concert.

Courtesy: Carnegie Hall

Archives.

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December 7 1937 - NY Sun

We can push back the date of the first announcement of the Carnegie

concert to December 7 1937. I had originally suggested that the first press

releases went out on the December 11. Irving Kolodin was the music critic for

the New York Sun and, as we know from the original LP liner notes, Kolodin was

in Sol Hurok’s office on the day that the idea for a concert was first discussed.

No surprise then that it was the NY Sun which had the ‘scoop’ on the story.

The newspaper states that Carnegie Hall will host the first swing concert in its

history on January 16 1938 and plans were being advanced for various

musicians to appear as guest artists. A selection of names come up in the

press including Mary Lou Williams, Joe Turner, Beatrice Lillie and W C Handy.

The eventual line-up for the night ended up looking like a who’s who of jazz in

the 1930’s.

December 1937 - Spanish Loyalists – George Avakian.

In 2010, I was thrilled to be able to spend the afternoon talking to the

legendary record producer George Avakian at his home in New York. We sat

and chatted about the BG era whilst sipping a lovely bottle of Single Malt

which I had brought over from the UK. George’s memories of the swing era

came flooding back as I sat spellbound with my portable recorder running.

The afternoon was full of stories and I

was just about rolling on the floor with

laughter when George told me about

his encounter with a group of Spanish

Loyalists in 1937. It went like this:

As a school boy, George Avakian was

the editor of the Horace Mann Record,

the weekly newspaper of the Horace

Mann School for Boys in New York City.

Late in 1936, George had given himself

the assignment of interviewing Benny

Goodman and the band for a lengthy

article published on 25 November of

that year. Benny liked it, he was

impressed that somebody was writing

about his music and not the gossip. It

was through that article that George

became friends with Dwight Chapin, then Benny Goodman’s assistant. Only

Dwight could arrange back-stage visits to the band. When word got round

that George had written an intelligent review of the band’s climb to fame,

George was given an open invitation to attend rehearsals and mingle with the

musicians (with the permission of his parents of course!).

George remembers one occasion when Benny had been invited to play a

benefit for the Spanish Loyalists who had come to New York to raise money for

their cause. George explained:

George Avakian

and me at Doug

Pomeroy’s apartment

in Brooklyn. Doug’s

studio is up those stairs.

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During that period, which was my senior year at Horace Mann of course, my

school friend, Charlie Miller, and I used to hang around and help Chapin with

odds and ends. One very snowy night, Chape said,

“Look, the Quartet is playing a benefit for the Spanish Loyalists, the anti-Franco

people, up in Columbus Circle and I need some help to pack the drums and

vibraphone to get them up there. Would you guys help me?”

Of course, we said, “Sure, delighted!“ We strapped the vibraphone to the

back of the taxi and Chapin said,

“Look, the three of us will go up there and the musicians will follow in about

fifteen minutes.”

Unfortunately, as I was un-strapping the vibraphone, I cut my thumb on the

sharp metal frame and it started to bleed. Chape took a white handkerchief

from his pocket – because everybody was well-dressed around the band,

including the band.- and wrapped it around my hand and said,

“You go on up, take Benny’s clarinet and tell the people that we’ll be up in a

minute with the vibraphone and drums.”

So he and Charlie schlepped the vibraphone and drums after me. I

remember seeing the frames of the door in this beat up old tenement building

on the second floor. I knocked at the door, which was open, out came a rush

of cigarette smoke like you can’t believe, and the loud noise of drunken

Spaniards. I had the clarinet, I didn’t speak Spanish of course, but when

Chape arrived I was being mobbed by these people and finally I was lifted up

and put on a table. Chapin said,

“They saw you with the clarinet and they think that you’re Benny Goodman so

act the part until Benny comes!”

So here I am, standing on this table and Charlie and Chape are having a ball

laughing at me. There was one gorgeous girl who looked a little like Ava

Gardner with a low cut dress and a red flower in her hair - she was like ‘Miss

Spanish Loyalist of 1937’. She poured me a drink of what I assumed was a

tumbler of red wine, then people were starting to shout and holler and yell at

me, and Chapin said

“Well, they still think you’re Benny and you’re going to be toasted and you

have to give a toast back.” I said “I don’t know Spanish!” He said, “It’s very

easy, after they have raised a toast to you, just raise your glass and say “Muerte

a Franco” which means death to Franco.”

I was a sensation! When I took that first slug, I took a big swallow and I nearly

died because it was neat Brandy. It damn near killed me! Everybody’s

laughing because I’m choking on it. So there I was, standing on a table,

holding Benny’s Clarinet and everybody is chanting “Benny Goodman, Benny

Goodman” and then in comes Benny and my masquerade ended right there!

I don’t remember what the quartet played, they just played a couple of

numbers and split. Benny wasn’t a political person but certainly would have

done something for the Spanish Loyalists.

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The original photo outside of Carnegie

Hall in 1937/8

Here, I have corrected the perspective

to square it up.

This is a still from the newsreel film.

Have a look a the first letters of Benny

Goodman and his Swing Orchestra.

They appear to be a lighter colour. I

am guessing that they were red, but

they could have been grey, or blue or

any other colour.

On the next page I have mocked-up a

poster showing how the original poster

may have looked.

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The Carnegie Hall poster in its full

colour glory! You couldn’t possibly

miss that if you were walking down

7th Avenue in January 1938.

The quest for the Carnegie Hall

concert poster! One of the things

that I was never able to find whilst

researching my book was the poster

that can be seen in photographs

taken in 1938. Unfortunately, there

were probably only ever two or three

of these posters ever printed, one

outside the hall and one above the

box office window. In those days

the ‘three-sheet’ poster was exactly

that, three separate sheets of

paper stapled or nailed into the

back of the poster case. My good

friend Gino Francesconi, the archivist

at Carnegie Hall told me “I used to

watch it myself when the guy putting

up a new one would just staple on

top of the old one or rip them

down!” Given that there were so

few printed and that they used to be

routinely discarded, the chances of

finding the original poster are pretty

remote, but that’s not to say that the

poster isn’t somewhere out there!

Looking at the photographs, it seems

quite clear to me that the original

poster was printed in two colours.

Studying contemporary posters, red

seems to be the most predominant

colour used. They were all printed

by the same company and using a

standard format. To see how it

might have looked to passers-by in

1938, I have reproduced the poster

here using black and red, it looks

quite eye catching!

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December 30 1937

Goodman was offered $100,000 for a 3 year exclusive contract with Brunswick

Records. Benny chose to stay with RCA-Victor until May of 1939. From there

he moved over to Columbia records where he stayed until 1946.

January 6 1938.

Reports early in January suggested that Benny was rehearsing daily for the

concert. I deduced in my book that on Thursday 6 January Benny’s band had

assembled at Carnegie Hall for a rehearsal. John Totton, the stage manager

at Carnegie Hall, got the band to sign autographs, but four members of the

band are conspicuous by their absence, James, Wilson, Krupa and Reuss.

Both Harry and Teddy were in the recording studios that day, James with his

own band and Wilson with Billie Holiday. I believe that Gene Krupa was sick

and Reuss is unaccounted for. Writing in Screen & Radio Weekly, Jack Sher

mentions a lad who was trying to blag a backstage pass whilst the band were

rehearsing at Carnegie that Thursday, which was January 6th, confirming that

the band were indeed rehearsing that day.

January 14 1938 – Gene Krupa

It has always been suggested that Krupa left the Benny Goodman Orchestra in

March 1938 as a result of a very public argument on stage at the Earl Theatre in

Philadelphia. There is no doubt that the argument took place but it only

served to hasten Gene’s departure by a few weeks. It seems that Gene had

been planning to leave Benny for at least a couple of months. I mentioned

One of the rehearsal

sessions at Carnegie Hall.

Babe Russin, Benny, Krupa,

Freddie Green and Walter

Page.

Courtesy: Carnegie Hall Archives

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two stories that cropped up in the press in

January 1938 concerning Gene’s plans to

leave and start his own band. It was even

announced that Goodman himself would help

finance the venture. Further confirmation of

this plan was published in the Long Island Daily

Press on the January 14 1938, explaining that

Gene will leave Goodman in April to front his

own band. There seems little doubt that Benny

would have known about Gene’s imminent

career move, up to band leader, even before

the Carnegie Hall concert. There were

comments starting to appear in the press that

young fans were mobbing Goodman shows

just to see Krupa, not Goodman. The writing

was on the wall and Benny knew it.

January 15 1938 - RCA Victor ad

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found this

advert in the New York Sun. Dated 15 January

1938, this is the day before Goodman’s famous

concert at Carnegie Hall and look who is

promoting Goodman’s records on the back of

that concert….. RCA-Victor! As we now all

know, it was Columbia Records who issued the

concert in 1950 and shortly after the records

went on sale, there was some pretty lively

discussion between Columbia and RCA Victor

as to who owned the rights to the recordings.

First reports of this cropped up in The Billboard

Magazine in January 1951. RCA-Victor had an

exclusive contract with Goodman in 1938

when the concert was recorded and they felt

justifiably aggrieved that Goodman had sold

the rights of the concert to Columbia Records.

George Avakian was the director of popular

music at Columbia at the time and he

explained to me how they resolved this

delicate situation. The solution came from a

loophole in the RCA contract itself. The contract only covered studio recordings, RCA

had no right to prevent Goodman from making live recordings. Goodman signed

with RCA-Victor in 1935, since nobody really made live records in those days it would

not have seemed important to cover that eventuality in the contract. Early in 1951,

neither party would have known how phenomenally successful the records were to

become. Couple that with the fact that Columbia had already paid the American

Federation of Musicians in the region of $10,000, calculated on basis of scale for every

3 minutes of performance. It wouldn’t really be feasible to withdraw the records, they

had to find a workable solution.

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As it happens, RCA wanted to use a live

recording they had recently made which

included one of Columbia’s opera stars,

Richard Tucker, a leading tenor at the

Metropolitan Opera. This live performance

was conducted by Toscanini. So it was

agreed to make a reciprocal arrangement

where RCA could issue Tucker’s recording if

Columbia could issue Goodman’s. It was

agreed and they spoke no more about it.

If it wasn’t for the fact that Columbia and RCA

are now one and the same thing, I’m sure this

ad would re-ignite the issue!

January 16 1938 - How was the concert

recorded?

In chapters 19 and 20 in the book I discussed

how the concert might have been recorded.

I can add a little more to that topic here.

Albert Marx, Jess Stacy, Martha Tilton and a

host of other Goodman alumni and experts

were special guests at the IAJRC convention

in California in August 1987. In a session on

the Carnegie concert at the convention,

Albert and Jess Stacy spoke in detail about

their recollections of the Carnegie concert

and how the recordings came to be made.

The convention was a memorial tribute

dedicated to BG, who had recently died, and

it was chaired by Wayne Knight. Some

readers might remember Wayne’s great series

of Camel Caravan LP’s issued in the1980’s,

many of which had liner notes by John

McDonough. John has kindly sent me some of his photos especially for this update.

I was fortunate to bump into Peter Manders recently at a re-creation of the Carnegie

concert given by Pete Long and his ‘Goodmen’ orchestra in Malvern, UK Peter is a

talented artist and caricaturist, he attended the 1987 conference and drew many of the

delegates as they sat on the various panels. You can see his sketches reproduced in

the October 1987 IAJRC Journal report on the event. Peter fondly remembered

meeting Albert and Jess at the convention and he told of how he went to Albert’s house

afterwards. They talked long into the night and Albert showed him the photographs

that his brother Lawrence took at Carnegie. Peter gave me a copy of his drawing of

Albert which I have included here.

I am indebted to Lee Cohen in California who got in touch regarding his good friend

Albert Marx. Albert had commissioned Harry Smith to make the recordings of the

concert. Lee had responded to a request that I had posted on my website asking the

identity of an unknown man photographed with BG backstage at Carnegie Hall. (Page

122) Lee is quite sure that the man in the photo is Albert Marx. We know from the

Peter Manders’

caricature of Albert

Marx from the IAJRC

convention in 1987.

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report in Down Beat Magazine that Albert’s wife Helen

Ward and their new baby, were there back stage on

the night. Lee kindly sent me a photograph of Albert

taken in the 1970’s and it certainly does look like the

man with Goodman at Carnegie.

Lee and I also talked about how the concert could

have been recorded. At the time of the IAJRC

convention 1987, detailed information about how the

LP’s came to be recorded was still largely unknown.

John Hammond said, at Benny’s Carnegie reunion in

1968, that it was Zeke Frank who recorded it from his

studio within Carnegie Hall itself. (There is a large

complex of apartments, workshops and studios there.)

We now know that not to be the case. Albert

had explained that he had instructed Harry Smith to

record the concert. At that time, Harry had studios at

156 W44th Street, about 10 blocks from Carnegie Hall.

Lee told me last year of how Albert remembered the

events in the 1970’s. Albert said then that Harry Smith

literally strung up cables down the street to the

recording machines in his studio.

There already was an established way to record from

Carnegie Hall using broadcast quality telephone lines

linked to Columbia Broadcasting System master con-

trol. The term telephone lines is perhaps misleading.

These were broadcast quality lines capable of

carrying a very high quality signal. Many of the small

studios had lines to CBS master control and all they

had to do to make a recording was arrange to be

patched in. (It is worth noting here that CBS at that

time was not the same company as Columbia

records.) Harry Smith’s work was mainly in the classi-

cal field. He had strong links with Carnegie Hall and

Town Hall from where he often made classical

recordings. He had a thriving business making demos

and test records for orchestras and band-leaders.

The control booth at Carnegie Hall was built in 1930 by

CBS, at which time they also installed the single microphone suspended over

row ‘H’! The booth was situated backstage where sound engineers could

monitor performances at the console and balance things ready for broadcast.

In the early 1930’s, 9 million people used to tune–in to the New York

Philharmonic on Sundays, broadcast live from Carnegie Hall.

The suggestion from Lee was that the powerful trade unions at Carnegie,

would not have allowed their equipment to be used for a private recording.

Lee had been at Albert’s house on many occasions in the 1970’s and on at

least one occasion, he was there with Wayne Knight. Both Lee and Wayne

The building where Harry

Smith had his studios in

1938. Photographed in

2011.

15

A few people have asked about the photo montage that appears on the back cover of the book, a version

of which is shown here. The photo is a montage of the 3 photos shown at the top, with a lot of stretching

and warping to make the ceiling line match. It took a long time but I think the result is quite pleasing. The

event shown here never actually happened but it is pretty close to the real thing which is depicted in grainy

shot above. That shot is interesting in itself, because it shows very clearly the single microphone hanging high

above the band.

16

confirm that Albert was sure that cables were installed especially

for that recording.

This idea seems implausible to me, the cables would have to

cross too many road junctions. Harry Smith could have used a

studio which was much closer, as there were a few more

convenient studios in the area at that time. I think the clincher

for me is the fact that the Universal labels on the acetates that

were retrieved from BG’s closet in 1950, have ‘CBS’ typed on

them, indicating the source. In other words, they were recorded

using the CBS feed. The microphone that Martha used on stage

in the second half of the concert had the CBS logo emblazoned

on it. I would say that it was ‘probably definitely‘ recorded using

the standard CBS lines….but I could be wrong!!

January 16 1938

The well-known Hollywood actor Douglass Montgomery was at

the concert. A review from Screen & Radio weekly said he was

bobbing up and down with the natural enthusiasm of a jitterbug.

The reviewer also noted that the gyrations of the press at times

surpassed that of the band!

January 17 New York post - Standing room only!

I have tried to pin down exactly when the concert sold out,

Variety magazine reported a ‘virtual sellout’ in their 12 January

edition and that would have gone to press a few days before.

A Photo published in New York Post the day after the concert

shows fans in line outside of Carnegie Hall, waiting for standing

room tickets. The general consensus seems to be that there

were about 200 people crammed in at the back. A report in the Times-Union

suggests that the lucky few who got those golden standing tickets were six

deep at the back of the hall.

Later in the month, when the numbers were tallied up, it was reported that

7500 people had tried to get tickets and were turned away! I was sceptical,

at least 2 newspapers carried the story, so it must have come from somewhere.

I am not sure that the Carnegie Hall box office would have been keeping track

of this kind of information. However, when we consider that just 10 days later,

25,000 people saw Benny and the band play at the Paramount theatre on the

first day of a 3 week run, then the figure of 7500 fans turned away in the last

few days before the Carnegie concert seems quite probable. That might still

be some kind of record too.

January 21 1938 – RKO Pathe Newsreel release.

For a long time now, I have been trying to find out more about the newsreel

footage of Benny Goodman’s first Carnegie Hall concert. Could there be

some additional footage languishing in an archive somewhere? There are

various stills from the film in my book and on my Facebook page. According

to Motion Picture Daily of 21 January 1938, the latest RKO Pathe newsreel to be

Top: The Universal label on

the acetates discs used for

the original 1950 release

and the 1999 re-issue. Note

‘CBS’ typed in as the station.

Bottom: Martha Tilton

singing to the CBS

microphone at Carnegie.

17

released (Vol 9 No 53), included the footage of BG at Carnegie Hall. Up until

now, I have never seen this footage with the titles intact. My good friend Earl

Caustin mentioned my quest to the jazz film expert, Mark Cantor. (He has a

wonderful Youtube channel!) Mark very kindly looked out his copy of the film,

transferred it to DVD, and sent it over to me. I was very excited to see the

opening title intact for the first time.

I had always assumed that this newsreel was silent, so I was interested to see

that the film had a soundtrack with a commentary by Andre Baruch. I am not

an expert on the capabilities of newsreel cameras in 1938. There were

certainly newsreel films made at that time with ‘live’ sound. Is it possible that

the original Carnegie Hall newsreel film had music recorded that evening? A

review of the film in Variety Magazine in January 1938 says that the Pathé

coverage “is good though the camerawork isn’t tops and the sound is

uneven”. Is there anybody out there reading this who has a copy of this film

with the original sound? I would love to see it and hear it.

In the absence of the original soundtrack, I set about trying to synchronise the

film with the Columbia recordings. In total, the running time for the newsreel is

only just over one minute. The film was shot from various locations within

Carnegie Hall, much to the annoyance of the audience who gave a public

library “Shusssh” to the noisy camera man during the quiet passages of music.

The finished product as seen in movie theatres in 1938 is an edited version of

the concert that night. It is only possible to synchronise the music with small

section of the film. The film finishes with Sing Sing Sing and so I chose that track

as the basis for my compilation. By using photographs taken that night, I

managed to stretch the 1 minute newsreel to over 8 minutes. Some of it,

The title page from the

RKO Newsreel. From Mark

Cantor’s collection.

18

especially the ending, is synchronised perfectly. You can watch the movie on Youtube,

there is a link to it on my website. www.bg1938.com So far my little film has had over

250,000 views!

January 20 1938

Sometime around the 20 January, Goodman and the band went off to Miami for a

vacation, according to Motion Picture Daily, their first for over two years. A report in the

Southern Israelite (Atlanta) on the 28 January, stated that Benny, ‘Daddy of Swing music’

had started work on his autobiography. It seems that the break in Florida gave him the

time to sit down and ponder on his first thirty years for his book ‘The Kingdom of Swing’,

co-written by Irving Kolodin was published by Stackpole in 1939.

May 10 1948

I am grateful to Lars Westin in Sweden for pointing out that the BG concert in Carnegie

Hall in 1948 was indefinitely postponed (cancelled). The reason given was that Benny

hadn’t yet completed his sextet – which at that time featured Stan Hasselgard on

clarinet. Ticket sales at Carnegie Hall had slumped in the 1947/48 season. This was

especially true for jazz performances. Louis

Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Kid Ory and

His Creole Jazz Band all had disappointing

turnouts at that time. It was suggested in

Downbeat magazine that the cause could

be the heavy attraction of television which

had taken its toll.

Autumn 1950

George Avakian’s recollections in 2011 of

how the concert recordings were mastered

and who was responsible for the various

aspects of the process, differ a little from that

told by Bill Savory. Savory was interviewed

by Ross Firestone in the early 1990’s for his

extensive biography on BG. Of course, it is

not surprising that when remembering events

from so long ago, events which only formed

a tiny part of long and busy careers,

memories get mixed up.

According to George, Bill was one of the

people on the Columbia staff who worked

on the creation of the LP in the late 1940’s.

His specialty was cutting the masters, he

developed the cutter heads that made the

microgroove such a big success. “That

experience of having Bill drop the pick-up on

the record, the first time that I heard a note

from the Goodman Concert was enough to

solidify a life-long friendship.”

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Columbia’s Press release launching

the double LP in 1950.

20

One person at Columbia, whom I neglected to mention in my book, was mastering

engineer Paul Gordon. He was also involved in the production of the Carnegie LP.

Gordon had worked with Howard Scott on producing Columbia’s first 100 classical

LPs of the Masterworks label and it was his great experience in creating LPs from

multiple acetates that Ted Wallerstein needed for the ground breaking Goodman

release. In later years, Paul went on to form the Tin Roof Jazz Band in Connecticut.

November 4 1950 First ad for the LP (Billboard)

This Billboard Magazine carried probably the first printed advertisements for the

forthcoming LP release of the concert. It looks like the work of Columbia graphic

designer James Amos who designed the, now Iconic, blue LP cover of SL160.

Perhaps showing a tentative start to the Carnegie concert publicity campaign, the

advert features Benny’s new recording of ‘Oh Babe’ with vocals by ‘Rickey’, the

Carnegie concert is relegated to the bottom of the page which does at least

proclaim ‘A Fabulous Event in Music’.

November 6 1950

Columbia Records sent out a 9 page press release under their ‘Speaking of Records’

heading, it announced the forthcoming issue and tells some of the now well-known

stories associated with the concert. The press release also gives us an edited version

of Irving Kolodin’s liner notes.

1951 - Stacy got paid $122.51

In 2010, BearManor Media published the

book ‘Chicago Jazz and then Some – as

told by one of the original Chicagoans,

Jess Stacy’. This is a wide ranging study

by Jean Porter Dmytryk. During the

course of the narrative, there are several

references made to the Carnegie

concert and one comment struck me as

being particularly noteworthy. In 1951, a

disc jockey brought an album into Jess

for him to autograph the cover. Jess

was very surprised to see the title of the

Columbia Carnegie 1938 LP as he didn’t

know that it had even been recorded.

Over the next few days Jess contacted

other members of the 1938 band and

discovered that none of them knew that

it had been recorded or released as an

LP either! The next week after his

enquiries, Jess received a cheque for

$122.51 in the mail ‘As payment for the

Columbia Records release of the 1938

Carnegie Hall concert’. Jess says in the

book “The whole thing seemed wrong

somehow, but I kept the money.”

Invitation courtesy of

John McDonough

21

Photographs taken at the

January 1968 reunion.

Above: Benny, Cootie,

Gene, Hymie, Lionel and

Russ Connor.

Right: Gene being Gene!

Courtesy: John McDonough

22

The Palomar drum (top

half) photographed in

1936, fits perfectly with

same drum photographed

over 70 years later at the

Smithsonian Institution

(bottom half).

Brooks Tegler with the gene

Krupa’s drum at the Smithsonian

in 2012.

I have scribed lines across the

photos to align them at the

correct scale. Doing this

highlights the similarities and

differences between the

photographs.

2015 - Krupa drum kit Smithsonian.

Comparing it with the Carnegie Hall drum.

There is an enthusiastic group on Facebook

who compare notes on drums and

drummers and there is always interesting

discussion on Krupa’s kit and in particular,

the kit that is housed at the Smithsonian

Institute in Washington. There was a

suggestion that this was the Carnegie Hall

Drum. I prepared some illustrations for the

Facebook group, comparing photographs

of Gene Krupa’s Bass Drum heads during

the Goodman years. It is clear that this is

not the drum used at Carnegie Hall in 1938.

The drum housed at the Smithsonian

Institute is the very same drum used by

Slingerland in publicity shots taken at the

Palomar Ballroom in 1936.

The noted drummer and drum expert

Brooks Tegler is writing a book in which he

examines Krupa’s kit in forensic detail. We

eagerly await its publication.

23

July 1953

Columbia starts to release BG’s Carnegie Hall recording on 45’s in 1953, if you can

find a clean copy they sound very good. My guess is that they went back to the

masters when they cut these, they have quite a raw feeling to them, slightly

different to the early LPs.

March 1954

Following their mutual arrangement with Columbia records in 1953, Philips Records

announce that they would be issuing the LP in England in 1954.

January 1968

Benny’s band was always in a state of flux as members came and went for various

reasons. The permutation that played at Carnegie Hall was only stable for a

couple of months before the next inevitable change. Strange as it may seem

now, Benny had completely lost touch with the members of his Carnegie band

and the star guests who played that night. So, when Benny decided to have a

party to celebrate the 30th anniversary at his New York apartment in 1968, he had

to send out a plea on WNEW and in the press for veterans of the concert to come

forward. In all, 14 of the 26 original Carnegie Hall veterans attended. Buck

Clayton, Jess Stacy, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Vernon Brown, Bobby Hackett,

George Koenig, Hymie Schertzer, Art Rollini, Martha Tilton, Cootie Williams, Chris

Griffin and Ziggy Elman. John McDonough wrote a very detailed account of the

party in the March 7 1968 issue of Down Beat magazine in. Worth reading if you

can find a copy.

May 2009—Lincoln Centre NYC

2009 would have been Benny’s centennial year and to mark the occasion, the

Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra staged an extravaganza of Benny’s music led

by former Goodman band member and arranger, Bob Wilber. The evening

featured guest appearances by Ken Peplowski and Buddy DeFranco on clarinets

and Warren Wolf on vibes. They played a variety of Goodman classics. Later that

same evening, the band, members of Benny’s family and various other special

guests got together for a birthday party upstairs in the Lincoln Center.

I had timed the launch of my book to coincide with BG’s centenary and was

fortunate to be invited to the party by Benny’s former publicist Phoebe Jacobs.

(She was at the concert in1938!) It was pretty surreal being at a party chatting to

the likes of Bob Wilber, Ken Peplowski and Victor Goines. I had a supply of books

with me and that helped me with introductions!

There was one very special guest there that evening, a man who I really wanted to

meet, the great George Avakian. His association with Benny Goodman and in

particular, the Carnegie Hall concert, is the stuff of legend. Susan Satz from the

Benny Goodman Estate, whom I had met before at Carnegie Hall, had been so

helpful during the preparation of my book and offered to introduce me to George.

I was quaking in my boots at the thought and I nervously offered to show him the

book that I was clutching. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I thought he

would be very critical of it, I was completely wrong, George was delightful. He sat

me down next to him and he went through it page by page. As he flicked

through he would stop and say something like “Ahh, there’s Bill Savory” and launch

24

into a tale about his days working with Bill at Columbia

Records. It was difficult to believe that I was sitting with

one of the masterminds of jazz and popular music. He

had met Fats’ Waller and Charlie Christian, he signed

the likes of Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. He produced

classic albums with stars of the magnitude of louis

Armstrong and Duke Ellington. It was an evening I’ll

never forget.

The next day I flew back home to the UK and on

checking my emails I noticed a message from George.

He said how much he had enjoyed talking to me about

BG and would I like to drop by his house in The Bronx this

afternoon to talk more?! I could have kicked myself, I

almost went straight back to the airport. I did get to go

back to New York to see George in 2011.

I had spent several years researching and writing the book, which was very

rewarding. It took over my life. Now, with the book finished and published, I

was at a loose end. My wife suggested that I work towards getting the set of

acetates I have of the concert released as a CD. These acetates had come

to me from the estate of Savington Crampton, the 14 discs are dubs, made in

1938 from the original set. Savington had kept them as a souvenir of his work

with BG. The discs had been transcribed for me and there are some

differences that I mentioned in the book. One thing that I had not done was

George Avakian

munches his way

through a huge pile

of birthday cake

whilst chatting to me

about the concert!

25

to gang up Sony’s latest issue by Phil Schaap

alongside Crampton’s set on a computer screen, play

them simultaneously to see how they matched.

Playing through the track ‘I Got Rhythm’ I made an

extraordinary discovery, something that nobody else

seems to have noticed in the 10 years since the

‘complete’ version was released. There are 34 bars,

about 30 seconds, of this track missing from the

Sony/Legacy issue! It’s true! There is an editing error

on the first disc which means that the section between

the ‘trick endings’ towards the end of the track has

been left out. The amusing thing is that all of the so

called restored versions, there are several of them,

have copied the same error, thus proving their

provenance back to the Sony issue. I was a couple of

weeks too late to include this new information in my

book but I was able to pass on the information to

Dave Jessup. Dave included it in his wonderful Supplemental Discography pub-

lished by Scarecrow, an update to Russ Connor’s series of books.

What to do? I sent an email to George telling him the story about the missing

section and he was flabbergasted. He told me that he had a tape in his

basement that Bill Savory had made for him in 1950, so that he could think about

the running order and timings at home. These are 10 inch tapes, at 15 ips on 4

Fairchild reels. George had copies made and sent them to me. They sound

very good to my ears and more importantly, they have the complete concert.

These tapes were made in 1950 when the acetates were still in good condition,

they contain little crackle and a lot more warmth than the later versions.

September 2013 - Probably the most sig-

nificant re-issue since 1999.

BG at Carnegie Hall 1938 – Sony Music

Entertainment (Japan).

Blu-spec CD2 SICP 30223-4

I received a review copy of the new

Japanese Blu-spec CD2 , Carnegie Hall

concert in 2013 and played it through a

couple of times. The packaging is

exactly the same as the 1999 version with

the same liner notes booklet, barring

some typographic corrections to the

early versions. The print quality is much

better than the original 1999 issue. SME Japan have used the original master

from the 1999 issue for this new format issue. The sound quality however is

different, it certainly sounds more detailed. The Japanese issues of this concert

have always been good and this is no exception. There does seem to me to be

a lot more to hear. The sound of the drums is realistic; you can feel the beautiful

warmth of those calf skins. The cymbals too have sparkle, compared to the

Bill Savory, Dave

Chertok Helen Ward

and Diane Eisese.

Jaunuary 16 1978.

Courtesy: John

McDonough.

My set of dubs of the

concert. 14 discs in all.

They once belonged to

Savington Crampton

radio producer at

William Esty.

26

‘splash’ of the earlier incarnation. The same goes for the piano, which sounds – to my

ears – a lot more rounded, full and engaging. Some extra subtleties of the

orchestrations start to peek through as well, this is wonderful. As always, every time I

play this concert I hear something new. This Blu-spec CD2 will provide a whole new

layer of little details to discover for years to come.

But there is a downside (isn’t there always!). Again, to my ears, this extra fidelity has

brought the crackle and surface noise into even sharper focus, it is quite intrusive in

places and the overall sound of this CD is still quite shrill. That is a shame; surely there is

no need for this. And yes, we are still missing a fair chunk of ‘I Got Rhythm’.

I can’t write this without mentioning the amazing job that Harry Smith made of

recording this concert, remotely, from his studio a few blocks away from Carnegie Hall.

The original recordings cover 28 sides of acetate discs. With a maximum of about four

minutes per side, Harry must have been working frantically that night to capture it all

without missing anything. All-round, this offering is probably only for purists and

fanatics like me (us?), it does bring us a couple of inches closer to what it must have

been like to hear that incredible 1938 band in the flesh.

Universal label

Sadly, Howard Scott at Columbia Records who was the producer of the first LP issue of

the concert has recently died. Recording engineer Seth Winner was fortunate to

obtain the original acetates from Howard’s estate. These were used for both the

Columbia issue of 1950 and the Schaap CD issue 1999. Seth told me that the

The Holy Grail!

This is photo of the first side

of the legendary Goodman

Acetates. The very ones

that Benny’s sister-in-law

Rachel Speiden found in

Benny’s old apartment.

Courtesy: Seth Winner.

27

acetates were close to being thrown into a dumpster! He has kindly sent me

sound samples from the acetates and at long last, a picture of one of the

record labels. The picture confirms that the acetates were indeed cut on

Universal blanks.

It is generally accepted that Harry Smith recorded the concert under the

direction of Albert Marx. However, why these acetates have Universal labels is

still unexplained. Bill Savory suggested that Harry Smith had probably asked

Raymond Scott, who owned Universal, to record another set in parallel, as

Albert may have asked for 2 sets. That would account for why the set which

Goodman’s sister-in-law found in her closet in the summer of 1950, were

Universal.

Back in 2009, I sent a copy of my book to Howard Scott. George confirmed

that Howard had received it but I understand that he was too ill to respond, I

would have loved to have heard from Howard. George Avakian and I were

working on a reissue of the concert and we were trying to contact Howard but

alas, he never responded. I am still trying to get our re-issue off the ground, I’ll

update my website with any news of progress.

In the meantime, I wish every body a happy 78th anniversary of this remarkable

day back in 1938. I’ll keep digging for those illusive nuggets and I hope to be

able to report back in future with more ‘Discoveries’.

Very best wishes.

My photo montage of the ‘Quartette’ at Carnegie.

Teddy Wilson is hiding behind the vibraphone.

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Cheers George!

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