Goodman Swings Again For Record SPAC Audience
The Knickerbocker News, August 20, 1973
The Class of 1938 held its 35th reunion at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Saturday night, along with some younger sprouts, and the affair was a rousing success.
More than 10,000 persons turned out, the largest audience yet for an appearance by the Philadelphia Orchestra. With all due respect for that superb group, the chief attraction was the guest ensemble: Benny Goodman and his original quartet.
It was a foot-stomping. hand-clapping kind of night, and for more than an hour the audience was transported back to the late 1930s, when clarinetist Goodman and his orchestra, plus his incomparable quartet, were the royalty of the “swing” era of popular music.
GOODMAN and the other members of his original quartet—pianist Teddy Wilson, drummer Gene Krupa and vibraphonist Lionel Hampton (plus the dazzling bassist, Slam Stewart) are grayer and whiter of thatch and broader of girth—as were many of their fans—but they demonstrated that whenever they assemble for one of their rare musical reunions, they’re still the best around.
Their renditions of “Avalon,” “Stomping at the Savoy,” “Moonglow,” “Dinah” and other familiar standbys were as exhilarating as ever. Goodman’s clarinet was, as usual, what he wanted it to be, from soft and intimate to raspy and sassy. Teddy Wilson’s seemingly effortless and velvety phrasing was as delightful as it was in the golden era. Lionel Hampton, who does things with a vibraphone that its designers never envisioned, thrilled the crowd with his impossibly intricate runs. Also in top form was Slam Stewart, whose crooning along with his bass is a Stewart trademark.
Only Gene Krupa seemed to be more restrained than his colleagues. Once the greatest drummer of them all, with snap rolls and staccato rim shots that exploded like firecrackers, he appeared content Saturday night to beat out a driving but unsensational rhythm background.
NO MATTER. The crowd loved them all. In the bleachers erected on the stage for the overflow audience, a hefty middle-aged woman who must have been a formidable bobby-soxer in her day, energetically stomped her feet and clapped her hands with the quartet, all but crushing the smallish man sitting next to her. From the audience, enthusiastic shouts of “Bravo,” “Go, Go” and bursts of applause greeted various solos. At the end, Goodman and his group received three standing ovations.
During the pre-intermission program that preceded the Goodman quartet’s segment, Goodman displayed his virtuosity and versatility with a sensitive performance of Weber’s Concerto No. 1 in F minor for clarinet and orchestra, accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by assistant conductor William Smith.
But it was the nostalgia-tinged artistry of the Goodman quartet that the record crowd came to hear, and for many a middle-aged jazz fan the years rolled back, if only for an hour, Saturday night at Saratoga.
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