Benny Goodman returned to his swing band because he concluded that was what he knew best. In 1953, he said, "Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything...Basically it's all wrong. It's not even knowing the scales...Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles." In 1949 he studied with clarinetist Reginald Kell, requiring a change in technique: "instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and
Benny Goodman This integration in music happened ten years before Jackie Robinson became the first black American to enter Major League Baseball. "Goodman's popularity was such that he could remain financially viable without touring the South, where he would have been subject to arrest for violating Jim Crow laws." According to "Jazz" by Ken Burns, when someone asked him why he "played with that nigger" (referring to Teddy Wilson), Goodman replied, "I'll knock you out if you use that word around me again". In 1962, the Benny Goodman Orchestra toured the Soviet Union as part of a cultural exchange program between the