Facts about Benny Goodman.

Benny Goodman was born in Chicago's toughest neighborhood, The Maxwell Street Ghetto.
 Benny was the 9th of the Goodman's 12 children. They were an extremely poor family with hardly enough money to afford rent.

Benny practiced his clarinet three to four hours everyday. Self-improvement was a way for him to get out of the ghetto. He was a perfectionist.

At 14, Benny began to play as a professional musician.
At 26, Goodman was billed as the King of Swing.

 In 1937, Benny went on to perform at the Paramount Theatre in New York where an audience of thousands of frenzied teenagers danced in the aisles and screamed wildly for the band. With Benny's influence, swing music had become a national obsession.

As a bandleader Benny wanted the best musicians, race didn't matter.He did something very important when he hired pianist Teddy Wilson and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton to join his band. It was the first time black and white musicians played together in a famous group.

The intergration of Benny Goodman's quartet, led to many black and white intergrations like Jackie Robinson becoming the first African American baseball player.