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
Jerry Jerome (saxophonist) the Glenn Miller recording "Doin' the Jive" in which in soloed. He then joined the Red Norvo band. He joined the Benny Goodman orchestra in 1938. When Goodman broke up his band in 1940, he joined the Artie Shaw orchestra. While with Shaw he appeared in the 1940 film "Second Chorus" starring Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith. Jerry Jerome (saxophonist) Jerry Jerome (19 June 1912, in Brooklyn – 17 November 2001) was an American jazz and Big Band musician, a tenor saxophonist. He played with Glenn Miller and Red Norvo, then Benny Goodman from 1938 to 1940, and Artie Shaw.