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 Goodman overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke. The next night, August 21, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement. On top of the "Let's Dance" airplay, Al Jarvis had been playing Goodman's records on KFWB radio. Goodman started the evening with stock arrangements, but after an indifferent response, he began the second set with arrangements by Fletcher Henderson and Spud Murphy. According to Willard Alexander, the band's booking agent, Krupa said, "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing." The crowd broke into cheers and applause. News