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
Instrument-switch Talking Heads song "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" was so named because every member of the band played an instrument normally unfamiliar to them. An example of this performance is seen in the Jonathan Demme movie "Stop Making Sense". Instrument-switch Instrument-switching is a practice of live musicians in which musicians trade their instruments and perform with an instrument with which they are usually not associated. Instrument switches are usually employed to entertain the audience and demonstrate the band's proficiency. Many bands have employed instrument switches in their live performances; some of the best-known are Dream Theater (as Nightmare