Buy It Online: Benny Goodman And Glenn Miller's 1939 Carnegie Hall Concert - JRC Show CD

Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller At Carnegie Hall, The 1939 Concert - The JRC production live album recording is now on sale as a CD or Download.  Producer and drummer Richard Pite talks us through the history and the new recording.

In October 1939 ASCAP (the American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers) celebrated its 25th anniversary with a week of concerts at New York's Carnegie Hall. On the 6th of October the bill comprised four bands - those of Paul Whiteman, Fred Waring, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.  Waring's contribution featured his enormous choir and Whiteman's music was a potpourri of light music with little jazz content. What the younger element of the audience had come to see was the two biggest swing bands of 1939 slugging it out with Goodman going first and Miller winding up the evening.

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Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now

Keith Nichols' Paul Whiteman Orchestra.  JRC Concert Production

Benny Goodman's Orchestra had made its famous debut at Carnegie Hall in January 1938 and that evening has become one of the most celebrated in jazz thanks to the double album of the music being released in 1951 and becoming a million seller. Goodman returned to Carnegie Hall three times in 1939 - firstly as a guest of the classical violinist Joseph Szigeti in the debut performance of Bartok's Contrasts, then with his orchestra for the ASCAP evening and finally on Christmas Eve with his sextet for John Hammond's second "From Spirituals to Swing" concert.

Benny Goodman's Famous Carnegie Hall Concert, 1938

A couple of weeks before Benny's Carnegie Hall debut Glenn Miller disbanded his orchestra and was disconsolate about his failure to achieve enough success to pay his musicians. It's not very often that Hollywood biopics about musicians have much truth to them but the story of Miller going off in search of a unique sound was right on the button. He found it with his unique voicings for four saxes and a clarinet (played by the highly distinctive Wilbur Schwartz).

Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller At Carnegie Hall, 1939.  JRC Concert Production

At Goodman’s Carnegie Hall debut in 1938 the band was nervous playing in such a grand venue and one can feel the tension in the first couple of choruses of that year’s opening number - Don’t Be That Way.  Eighteen months  later and Goodman’s Orchestra was back with all guns blazing as Benny wanted to show the new kids on the block just who was the King of Swing.  For this concert he once again started with the same opener but this time it was brasher, faster and full of confidence and set the tone for the rest of his set.  Goodman followed this up with a jokey version of T’aint What You Do (a massive hit for Jimmie Lunceford in ’39) in which he poked fun at the so called “Mickey Mouse” bands of the day such as Kai Kaiser and Guy Lombardo - names that mean precious little today.  So rather than repeat the gags we’ve done the hip version by Lunceford with Enrico Tomasso taking the vocals. One O’Clock Jump was up next and the fact that Miller had also programmed it didn’t bother Benny (he also stole Miller’s current hit Sunrise Serenade and played that before Miller got a chance to do his own version  a little later in the evening – Benny was playing dirty!).

Enrico Tomasso - T'aint What You Do

JRC's Goodman & Miller 1939 Concert at The Radlett Centre

The 1939 version of Sing Sing Sing is shorter and much faster than the famous version of the year before and in Gene Krupa’s place the band was driven by the irrepressible Lionel Hampton and boy does he go at a lick!

Richard Pite - Sing, Sing, Sing

JRC's Goodman & Miller 1939 Concert at The Radlett Centre

The Goodman Miller concert was notable too for the inclusion of the pioneer of the electric guitar in jazz – Charlie Christian.  Dave Chamberlain captures the Christian magic superbly in the Goodman Sextet’s Flying Home.

1939 was the year Miller’s orchestra broke through and became a million selling band and they were on cracking form on this evening with the hits keeping on coming.  They weren’t scared off by Sing, Sing, Sing either and retaliated with a closer that went even faster – the manic Bugle Call Rag.  Besides the Goodman and Miller selections we’ve also added Louis Armstrong’s What Is This Thing Called Swing (Louis appeared earlier in the ASCAP week at Carnegie – the evening over ran so badly he only had time to do two songs and this was one of them).  

Benny Goodman's Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert - Sing, Sing, Sing

The Jazz Repertory Company at Cadogan Hall, London

Pete Long has been directing and fronting a recreation of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert for quite a few years now and there had been talk about a possible follow up show. The answer was pretty obvious - go forward a year, stay in the same esteemed venue, and add the most successful name in the history of swing music to the bill and, voilà, a hit show.

Richard Pite.  The Jazz Repertory Company.

(Buy the CD or Download here in our online store)

The Concerts Of The Jazz Repertory Company Showreel