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
Rusty Goodman Speers, The Happy Goodman Family, Michael English and Gaither Vocal Band. Goodman performed with The Plainsmen Quartet but he is better known with his family group, The Happy Goodman Family, where he sang along with his brothers Howard, Sam, Bobby and his sister-in-law Vestal Goodman. He is also the father of Tanya Goodman Sykes, singer/songwriter and former member of The Goodmans and Heirloom. Goodman launched his solo career in 1975 when Canaan Records founder Marvin Norcross approached him to record his first solo album. Goodman agreed and recorded "The Singer". He frequently performed both as a soloist and with his