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
Elkhart Band Instrument Company Elkhart Band Instrument Company Elkhart Band Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer in Elkhart, Indiana. The company was founded in 1923 by Andrew Hubble Beardsley (b Dayton Ohio 25 September 1864; d New York NY 10 October 1936), who was the president of Buescher Band Instrument Company, and Carl Dimond Greenleaf (b Wauseon, Ohio 27 July 1876; d Elkhart 10 July 1959), president of C.G. Conn, and who served the new company as secretary-treasurer. The company produced "Elkhart" branded band instruments as well instruments to be sold under merchandisers' brands ("stencil" instruments). Instruments produced by the company had an