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
Original Dixieland Jass Band composed by J. Russel Robinson with Con Conrad, with lyrics added by Benny Davis, has been covered over a hundred times. "Margie" has been recorded by Louis Armstrong, who also covered the band's "Tiger Rag", Ray Charles, Al Jolson, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra in 1935, the Billy Kyle Swing Club Band, Claude Hopkins, Red Nichols, Django Reinhardt, George Paxton, the Dutch Swing College Band, Fats Domino, Sidney Bechet, Don Redman, Cab Calloway, Jim Reeves, Gene Krupa, and Benny Goodman. "Margie" was a no. 9 hit for ODJB in 1921 with J. Russel Robinson on piano. Eddie Cantor had the