Benjamin David "Benny" Goodman got the chance to learn the clarinet because of a synagogue program allowing the rental of instruments for twenty five cents a week. His two larger brothers learned the trombone and trumpet. Little Benny got the clarinet. He was earning money from the age of twelve and played in klezmer bands and on Mississippi River steamboats.

Sixteen years later he was unofficially crowned the "King of Swing" at New York's Paramount Theater on March 10, 1937. His 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City was described as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."

Goodman would be on of the first white bandleaders to have black musicians in his band. As a theater's sunken stage slowly rose he and his band played its theme song and many audience members began doing the jitterbug in the aisles. In 1962 President Kennedy sent him to Moscow as an ambassador of goodwill where he wowed Khrushchev with his virtuosity. Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz such as Harry James, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton.