Benny Goodman and the Swing Era [Hardcover]

James Lincoln Collier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1989

Born of poor Jewish immigrant parents in Chicago in 1909, Beny Goodman joined the local synagogue band at the age of ten with two of his brothers. As he was the smallest of the three he was given a clarinet. Within a decade he was a musical legend, constantly in demand for radio shows and guest appearances with America's leading jazz orchestras. In 1934 he formed his own band, and by the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman was hailed as the undisputed 'King of Swing'. James Lincoln Collier brilliantly recreates the colourful popular music world of the 1920s and 1930s, when the music industry was just expanding, radio was the great source of musical entertainment, and swing bands were first finding national audiences. He also offers perceptive insights into the character and music of a man whose magic transformed the Depression years into the Swing Era.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

About the Author:
James Lincoln Collier is the author of over forty books, which have been published in twelve languages, including Russian: he is the only American writer on jazz to have official acceptance in the U.S.S.R. His books on music include biographies of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, The Making of Jazz and Practical Music Theory, used in many schools. His articles on music have also appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Village Voice, Wall Street Journal, and many others. He contributed major articles to the New Grove Dictionary of American Music and to Grove's Dictionary of Jazz. Collier has worked as a jazz musician around New York for many years, and has played with groups in a dozen nations around the world.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1ST edition (October 26, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195052781
• ISBN-13: 978-0195052787
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,048,548 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A shallow, repetitious book on the 'King of Swing', June 7, 1999

By 

John Grabowski (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Benny Goodman and the Swing Era (Hardcover)

Collier's book on Goodman is barely adequate, though better than the hatchet jobs he did on Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. He has a bad habit of rarely if ever seeking primary sources. Instead he relies on past published materials, acting as an assimilator rather than a true biographer. I've read most of the primary sources that went into this book, and Collier merely requotes them, often altering the words so little that I'm amazed he hasn't been the subject of a plagiarism suit in this litigious day and age. Aside from laziness, this approach leads to the needless perpetration of myths and errors rather than (as a biography should) the clarification and correction of facts. Consequently stories such as the single overhead mic at Carnegie Hall, "dancing at the aisles" at the Paramount, and so forth are repeated. The writer never found out about Helen Ward's near marriage to Benny, or the "horse collar," things that could have been uncovered with a little first-hand research. Instead he speculates on his "sometimes alcoholism" with no proof whatsoever, just a pointed misreading of a few things in Hammond's autobio. I felt like he was scraping his existing sources raw for new data by reading them too closely, when if he'd gotten off his chair and met more people first hand he could have uncovered new and interesting things.

Perhaps this is why the book repeats that Benny was "moody and difficult" about twenty different ways and twenty different times, each time with new stories of his moodiness and selfishness, followed by: "This story is too strange to have been made up." It's well-known and hardly news that Goodman was irritable and got worse as he got older. Unlike Collier, Ross Firestone in his book tries to figure out *why.* Maybe he did and maybe he didn't, but it's better writing than repeating over and over in every other chapter that "Benny was moody and difficult." If you cut those redundant parts, the book would have been a third shorter.

A far better book on BG is Ross Firestone's "Swing Swing Swing," which breaks new ground and sheds some real light on Goodman with original research. Collier seems content with reading liner notes and third-hand sources while sitting in his office.