Read Online That Old Black Magic: Louis Prima, Keely Smith, and the Golden Age of Las Vegas by Tom Clavin - Free Book Online

Blackhawk in Chicago on October 11, 1936, it had replaced “Let’s Have a Jubilee” as Prima’s theme song.
    As Goodman’s group performed “Sing, Sing, Sing” more often in concert, it kept adding to the original “hot” arrangement. One night in particular at the end of the song, an especially inspired Gene Krupa didn’t stop drumming, so Goodman resumed the clarinet, and the rest of “Sing, Sing, Sing” was improvised. According to Goodman biographer Ross Firestone, “By the time Benny recorded the expanded arrangement in 1937, it had grown to be over eight minutes long and covered both sides of a twelve-inch 78-RPM record.” A version of the song can be heard and seen in the 1937 movie
Hollywood Hotel.
    Simply put, the reason the Benny Goodman Orchestra became the first jazz band to cross over to play Carnegie Hall—esteemed home to Arturo Toscanini and Leopold Stokowski and their orchestras, which played the works of Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner—was to help promote cigarettes. The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was looking for something new to feature on its
Camel Caravan
musical variety radio show. A publicist at the firm handling the Camel account suggested Goodman’s band. Initially, Goodman refused because he felt Carnegie Hall was too conservative a venue for the hot jazz he played exclusively now and tanking there would attract more attention than an unsuccessful performance at another venue. But upon further reflection, Goodman accepted the challenge. Succeeding at Carnegie Hall, he reasoned, would be a huge boost for jazz.
    “It was a great winter for swing music in New York,” wrote Firestone. “Tommy Dorsey was playing across town at the Palm Room of the Commodore Hotel. After two years on the Coast his brother Jimmy returned east and replaced the Casa Loma at the New Yorker. Cab Calloway was at the Cotton Club. Mezz Mezzrow’s short-lived all-star mixed orchestra played a brief engagement at the Harlem Uproar House. Chick Webb was still taking on all comers at the Savoy. Louis Prima and Art Tatum were holding forth at the Famous Door. In January Count Basie went into the Loew’s State on Broadway.”
    Impresario Sol Hurok set aside January 16, a Sunday night, for the concert. Ticket prices ranged from eighty cents to $2.75. Goodman would not make a nickel on this gig, but if he was able to win over what might be a tough crowd to the side of swing music, that would be worth more than money. In a fortuitous bit of timing, on January 12,
Hollywood Hotel,
the musical featuring the Benny Goodman Orchestra, opened at the Strand Theater in New York and became an immediate hit.
    Carnegie Hall sold out, all 2,760 seats, and another hundred chairs that had been set up were sold too. A line formed that afternoon for standing-room tickets. By 8:45, when the show began, not another person could be shoehorned into the place.
    “Don’t Be That Way” was the first number, followed by “Sometimes I’m Happy,” “One O’Clock Jump,” “I’m Coming Virginia,” “When My Baby Smiles at Me,” and “Shine,” which featured Harry James paying homage to Louis Armstrong’s solo on the 1931 recording. Three members of Duke Ellington’s orchestra—all African American, of course—joined Goodman’s group to perform Ellington’s “Blue Reverie.” After another song, Count Basie, Lester Young, and three other members of the Count’s band came out onstage for a free-flowing jam session. Obviously, Goodman was also using the concert at Carnegie Hall as an opportunity to further break the unwritten ban on black and white musicians appearing together.
    With Teddy Wilson on piano and Gene Krupa on drums, Goodman’s trio performed “Body and Soul.” Then Lionel Hampton came out, and the quartet did “Avalon,” “The Man I Love,” and “I Got Rhythm.” The audience was in a frenzy, which was a good time for an intermission because there was plenty of music left to play.
    The second half of