Benny Goodman was entitled to spend two weeks at a summer camp near Chicago. It was the only time he could get away from his bleak neighborhood. He also received two years of instruction from classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp. When he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar. His father's death was "the saddest thing that ever happened in our family", Goodman said. He attended Lewis Institute (Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1924 as a high-school sophomore and played clarinet in a dance hall band. His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists
Benny Goodman produced by Albert Marx as a special gift for his wife, Helen Ward, and a second set for Benny. He contracted Artists Recording Studio to make two sets. Artists Recording only had two turntables so they farmed out the second set to Raymond Scott's recording studio...It was Benny's sister-in-law who found the recordings in Benny's apartment [in 1950] and brought them to Benny's attention. Goodman took the discovered recording to Columbia, and a selection was issued on LP as "The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert". Pianist and arranger Mary Lou Williams suggested to Hammond that he see guitarist Charlie