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
Tim Goodman his own band, Tim Goodman continued to tour and perform live at clubs and music festivals including the annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colorado, with longtime friends Emmylou Harris and John Prine. Goodman currently tours and records with Magic Music Band, a long-running country-rock band which Goodman originally co-founded during the 1970s with Will Luckey. Goodman and Luckey had been childhood friends and developed an interest in music while attending boarding school together in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Magic Music Band formed in Boulder, Colorado and performed with an impressive list of similar acts including Old & In the Way,