Word: goodman
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...bands most guilty of this are the white bands. Goodman, Krupa, Barnet, Dorsey, and others have all suffered from this failing. The first two seem to be getting away from...
Many bands either drag when they try it, or think that the nervous excitement resulting from the "stiff" drive style is better. Goodman used to think so, and things like "Sing, Sing, Sing" resulted. But people soon tire of the constant pound of the style and grow sick of the dearth of ideas in the music. So Goodman is trying to shift his band to the other style. Whether he will succeed is a moot question...
...Bard himself. Last week at Radio City's huge Center Theatre it swung him high & wide, turning A Midsummer-Night's Dream into a lavish jitterbug extravaganza. Shifting the scene from Athens to New Orleans around 1890 ("At the Birth of Swing"), it displayed clarinet-tooting Benny Goodman, trumpet-blowing Louis Armstrong, soft-voiced Maxine Sullivan, Walt Disneyish scenery, scraps of Mendelssohn's famed Midsummer-Night's Dream music, hit tunes in swingtime, half-a-dozen singing and dancing troupes...
...made to order for Arthur Shaw. Everyone in the business knows about them and allows for them. Shaw had been playing for enough years when he started as a leader to know what he was up against. The plain facts are that he didn't have any guts. Goodman didn't change his style to get to the top--he stuck to his guns and starved far longer than Shaw to get to the top. Count Basie played at $18 a week for six years before getting anywhere. Even sweet bands like Sammy Kaye were broke, but didn't bellyache...
...rated as just another good swing band. But last summer, when it moved to Westchester's Glen Island Casino, things began to happen. Within five months Glenn Miller's band was causing more rug-dust to fly, making more phonograph records, and playing more radio dates than Goodman and Shaw together. Last month the Chesterfield Hour conferred swing's Pulitzer Prize on Miller by signing him up to take Paul Whiteman's place, beginning Dec. 27. Last week Trombonist Miller, now undisputed King of Swing, went back to play a week's engagement, just...