BENNY GOODMAN
Swing Favourites, Vo 12: 1936 - 1939

The Swing Era, it is claimed, was sparked off when the Goodman band was voted Number One in the 1936 Down Beat magazine readers’ poll. However, Swing bands both good and indifferent predated this advent and although Goodman’s was nominally hailed the archetypal swing outfit, many fans were initially unaware of the role of “the written arrangement” in the latest breakthough. For while Goodman knew that jazz per se was a non-seller, he had realised that to be commercial swing arrangements needed to incorporate the best elements of jazz. Smoothly honed, planned and sophisticated, they nonetheless had to sound improvisational.

In this context Goodman was fortunate to enlist the top arrangers of the day. These included Jimmy Mundy (1907-1983) and most notably Fletcher Henderson (1897-1952), the black pianist-bandleader from Georgia whose arrangements provided the first boost to