Quotes About Benny Goodman

#1. The distance between me and Benny [Goodman], was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers; I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing; he was swinging.

Artie Shaw

#2. Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet.

Lee Konitz

#3. Benny [Goodman] used to practice 15 times more than the whole band combined.

Harry James

#4. Since the advent of Benny Goodman, there have been too few clarinetists to fill the void that Goodman left. Ken Peplowski is most certainly one of those few. The man is magic.

Mel Torme

#5. When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.'

Artie Shaw

#6. I started off playing the clarinet, after I was inspired by listening to my dad's Benny Goodman records.

Alvin Lee

#7. Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.

Artie Shaw

#8. I had never heard anyone play like Benny Goodman and had never seen anyone like him on the stage. I realize now that what impressed me and stayed with me in memory was - the sounds he made. He played so purely. The music seemed to come from him, not just the instrument he played with such mastery.

Marian Seldes

#9. Every single tune you know from the 1940s until the 1970s was written, arranged, and demoed in the Brill Building. OK, maybe not every song, but writers from Benny Goodman to Lieber & Stoller to Neil Diamond all kept offices there.

Shawn Amos

#10. These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.

John Cheever

#11. As for my band, well, my mentors were Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jimmie Lunceford, and no one had a band more smartly dressed than Duke.

B.B. King

#12. Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American.

Wynton Marsalis

#13. Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Lionel Hampton, the Mills Brothers, Woody Herman, and Nat King Cole. "Mona Lisa, men have named you,

George Hodgman

#14. Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel.

Artie Shaw

#15. As soon as it was understood that we could handle things in our own way, it was the thrill of my life to walk out on that stage with people just hemming the band in.

Benny Goodman

#16. To this day, I don't like people walking on stage not looking good. You have to look good. If you feel special about yourself then you're going to play special.

Benny Goodman

#17. If I have something I want to do, I make a business of doing it.

Benny Goodman

#18. It takes the black keys and the white keys both, to make perfect harmony.

Benny Goodman

#19. Some of the overflow audience actually sat on the stage.

Benny Goodman

#20. Sometimes when you start losing detail, whether it's in music or in life, something as small as failing to be polite, you start to lose substance.

Benny Goodman

#21. People have often said to me, 'You're so relaxed when you play.' Relaxed my elbow. It's practice.

Benny Goodman

#22. That night at Carnegie Hall was a great experience. When the thing was first put up to me I was a little dubious, not knowing just what would be expected of us.

Benny Goodman

#23. Creativity grows out of two things: curiosity & imagination.

Benny Goodman

#24. If you want to do something, you do it anyway, and handle the obstacles as they come.

Benny Goodman

#25. I don't have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn't very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge 'cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.

Benny Goodman

#26. One way or the other, if you want to find reasons why you shouldn't keep on, you'll find 'em. The obstacles are all there; there are a million of 'em.

Benny Goodman

#27. I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It's so difficult. I told him, I don't know but whatever you do don't stop. Just keep on going.

Benny Goodman

#28. You have to look good.

Benny Goodman

#29. Too many young musicians today want to win polls before they learn their instruments.

Benny Goodman

#30. After you've done all the work and prepared as much as you can, what the hell, you might as well go out and have a good time.

Benny Goodman

#31. If a guy's got it, let him give it. I'm selling music, not prejudice.

Benny Goodman