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 Kalama program prior to bombing of Pearl Harbor. From 1952 onward, Kalama was musical director and arranger for "Hawaiʻi Calls". Until before his death, Kalama played at the Halekulani's House Without a Key nightclub with Alan Akaka and Walter Moʻokini's "Islanders", and also as part of the stage band for the annual Steel Guitar Hoʻolauleʻa. The Hawai'i Academy of Recording Arts awarded Kalama the 1993 Na Hoku Hanohano Lifetime Achievement Award for his substantial contributions to the entertainment industry in Hawaii. Benny Kalama Benny Kalama (June 29, 1916 – September 21, 1999), born Benjamin Kapena Kalama in Kohala on the Big