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
Doc Severinsen with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. After he graduated, he went on tour with Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman. He was drafted by the Army during World War II. In 1946, he played trumpet on radio station KODL. In 1949, Severinsen got a job as a studio musician for NBC, where he accompanied Steve Allen, Eddie Fisher, Dinah Shore, and Kate Smith. The leader of "The Tonight Show" band, Skitch Henderson, asked him to be first chair trumpeter in 1962, and five years later Severinsen was leading the band. Under Severinsen's direction, the "Tonight Show" band became a