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
Benny Goodman sometimes performed in concert with him, beginning when she was sixteen. Hammond encouraged Goodman to integrate his band and persuaded him to employ pianist Teddy Wilson. But Hammond's tendency to interfere in the musical affairs of Goodman's bands led to conflict. In 1953 they had a falling-out during the tour with Louis Armstrong, which Hammond produced. Goodman appeared on a 1975 PBS tribute to Hammond but remained at a distance. In the 1980s, after the death of Alice Goodman, Hammond and Goodman reconciled. On June 25, 1985, Goodman appeared at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City for "A Tribute