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 Williams saw him was in the late 60s just before Kenny Baker returned to the band, Benny was playing fiddle with his right hand bandaged where he had got it caught in the fan on the bus the day before. His main instrument was fiddle but could play banjo, bass and guitar as well... Benny was a quiet and unassuming man and preferred to be the sideman and made many a country entertainer's song sound right." An album titled "Legend of Bill Monroe and More Bluegrass" was engineered By Bernard Rousseau of the Harriman Sound Lab and made available through Scott