Once Upon a Time in Chicago The Story of Benny Goodman Illustrated by Jeanette Winter Hyperion, 2000
“This being a children’s book, it is only a matter of pages before the young clarinetist is locally famous, and only a few more pages before we are told that ‘everyone in the world had heard his beautiful music'…. The specifics of Goodman’s career are dealt with in an introductory note that, if it doesn’t get everything exactly right (the big band Goodman formed in the 1930s was not as ‘groundbreaking’ as Jonah Winter claims, nor was it racially integrated), is on the whole as accurate as it is concise.” (The New York Times Book Review) Read the review.>
“In his review of my children’s book ‘Once Upon a Time in Chicago: The Story of Benny Goodman’ (Jan. 21), Peter Keepnews erroneously cites me for getting one crucial fact wrong in my author’s note: the fact that Benny Goodman had a racially integrated big band in the 1930s. Goodman’s integrated big band, featuring Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson, was the first of its kind, and furthermore is still world-famous for being so. This is common knowledge. The legendary 1938 Carnegie Hall performance by the integrated Goodman band (as caught on film clips featured in the Ken Burns jazz documentary) is visual proof of this. Need more evidence? Just check the personnel listed on the back of any Benny Goodman CD from the 1930s. – Jonah Winter” (The New York Times Book Review, Letters to the Editor). Read the review http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/04/books/l-swing-shift-052809.html
