Benny Goodman returned to his swing band because he concluded that was what he knew best. In 1953, he said, "Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything...Basically it's all wrong. It's not even knowing the scales...Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles." In 1949 he studied with clarinetist Reginald Kell, requiring a change in technique: "instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and
The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra the Count Basie Orchestra, for whom he composed and arranged. Mel Lewis, a jazz drummer, had been playing in big bands since he was 15, first with Boyd Raeburn, then Alvino Rey, Stan Kenton, Terry Gibbs, and Gerald Wilson. In 1961, he toured the Soviet Union with veteran big band leader Benny Goodman. After Lewis moved to New York City, he met Thad Jones and started the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra at the end of 1965. Beginning in February 1966, the band played every Monday night at the Village Vanguard. Since the mid-1980s, the band has been called the Vanguard