Benny Goodman began his career just as jazz was gaining a foothold in American culture. Jazz was a musical innovation that incorporated a wide range of harmonic and melodic styles—creating the melting pot of music, you might say—and got its starts in one of the United States's melting-pot cities, New Orleans. While jazz's initial popularity was largely confined to cities, the popularity of jazz was to grow over the next couple of decades, and it...
Benny Goodman began his career just as jazz was gaining a foothold in American culture. Jazz was a musical innovation that incorporated a wide range of harmonic and melodic styles—creating the melting pot of music, you might say—and got its starts in one of the United States's melting-pot cities, New Orleans. While jazz's initial popularity was largely confined to cities, the popularity of jazz was to grow over the next couple of decades, and it eventually became more mainstream. Goodman was a part of that centralizing process.
Goodman and his band were the first to perform a jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, for example. Goodman helped break the color barrier in jazz by having a fully integrated band. He is credited with starting the genre of swing due to the popular performance his band gave at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles in 1935.
Goodman's legacy lies in the fact that he popularized jazz for all of America. Early critics were not huge fans of the genre; it was too improvisational for their liking. Goodman risked bad reviews by performing in larger arenas, like Carnegie Hall, which then allowed for further promotion, and thus development, of the genre.
Also, Goodman specifically commissioned work from other composers. For example, he commissioned a concerto for the clarinet from American composer Aaron Copland, which he then performed on NBC radio in 1950. Copland designed the piece with many jazz elements in order to showcase Goodman's style.
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