Goodman Presides At Nostalgia Fest
by Don A. Metivier, The Post-Star, August 21, 1973
Nostalgia is the current vogue and that was proven Saturday night at the Saratoga Festival.
A total of 9,679 persons paid their way into Saratoga Performing Arts Center to hear Benny Goodman, his original quartet and the Philadelphia Orchestra. That is a new record for an orchestra performance at SPAC.
Goodman appeared with the Orchestra and Assistant Conductor William Smith during the first half of the program.
The jazz artist, who prides himself on also being able to
play the classics, performed Weber’s Concerto No. 1 in F minor for clarinet and orchestra. Suffice it to say he sounded exactly like a jazz clarinetist playing with a symphony orchestra.
Smith, who seldom gets the opportunity to conduct the Orchestra where he is second in command to Maestro Eugene Ormandy and that’s a job with all the future as a back-up first baseman for Lou Gehrig, made the most of his evening on the podium.
He and the Philadelphians opened the evening with Weber’s Jubilee Overture, which contains an anthem, “Hail dir im Sigerkranz,” which we all know as “America.”
Smith is like an old friend in front of the Orchestra. He knows where to go to find whatever he wants and his animated conducting put spirit and life into the performers.
Following Goodman’s solo spot, the Orchestra did the all-too-seldom-heard orchestra suite from Piston’s ballet “The Incredible Flutist.” The work should become a regular part of the Saratoga summer, much the same as it is of the Boston Pops, who premiered it in 1938.
However, the big audience had come to reminisce and cheers greeted the quartet as it opened its half of the program.
Gene Krupa, chewing his gum, was hunched over his drums. The “musician” of the group, Teddy Wilson — a former instructor at Juilliard School — was at piano, and the “entertainer” Lionel Hampton held forth with his vibraphone.
Goodman, of course, played his clarinet and a fifth member of the group, Slam Stewart — now a regular Goodman sideman — sat in on bass.
The group re-created the sounds of swing era — “We never called it swing, you guys did,” Wilson told the writers later, “we called it good music,” and Saratoga was transformed into Carnegie Hall circa 1938.
The sounds were so good, the performers brought back such good memories, you could overlook the fact they just can’t play as fast and as long, and yes, even as well, as they did in 1938.
The great, driving, youthful, flashy Gene Krupa was behind the beat, and can’t bake solos any more. Goodman has no stamina. Hampton carried them, but there are those who said he did in 1938.
However, the sounds were there, the music that carried most of the audience through the hell of a World War and nobody got picky when Babe Ruth started striking out a lot.
“Avalon,” “Rose Room,” “Lady Be Good,” “St. Louis Blues,” “Sweet Lorraine,” the sounds they came to hear, brought thunderous cheers from the audience.
The nearly 10,000 may have been present for the final performance by the original quartet ever. “We have no more bookings together,” Goodman said, “we are all busy on our own things, I don’t think we will ever play together again.”
It was truly then, the end of a wonderful era.
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