He was nicknamed the "King of Swing" for the new jazz idiom he introduced with arranger Fletcher Henderson (1897-1952). In 1934 he founded his own 12-piece band, which combined the expressive improvisatory style of black jazz with disciplined precision ensemble playing. He is associated with such numbers as Blue Skies and Let's Dance. Born in Chicago, he studied classical clarinet with Franz Schoepp of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra before embarking on a successful freelance solo career 1921, influenced by the New Orleans style. He introduced jazz to New York's Carnegie Hall 1938. In the same year he embarked on a parallel classical career, recording the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with the Budapest String Quartet, and commissioning new works from Bartók (Contrasts 1938), Copland, Hindemith, and others. He also recorded jazz with a sextet 1939-41 that included the guitarist Charlie Christian (1916-1942). When swing lost popularity in the 1950s, Goodman took a series of smaller groups on world tours, culminating in a US-government-sponsored visit to Moscow 1962.
