Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J 781.65092 CLI | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when they formed the Benny Goodman Trio with Gene Krupa. Here is the story of how two musical prodigies from very different backgrounds grew up, were brought together by the love of music, and helped to create the jazz style known as swing.
Author Notes
Lesa Cline-Ransome and James Ransome have collaborated on many award-winning picture books for children. These include Satchel Paige, which was an ALA Best Book for Children and Words Set Me Free- The Story of Young Frederick Douglass, which received starred reviews in Booklist and School Library Journal. The Quilt Alphabet was praised as "A blue-ribbon ABC book that combines bright, folksy oil paintings and lilting riddle-poems," in a starred review in Publishers Weekly and called "a feast for the eyes" in School Library Journal. They live in the Hudson River Valley region of New York.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-5-This DVD captures the historic moment of the first integrated band onstage in America by illuminating the musical lives of clarinetist Benny Goodman and pianist Teddy Wilson. The story flips back and forth between Benny's growing up in Chicago, playing in a synagogue band, to Teddy's youth living at the Tuskeegee Institute, playing violin, oboe, clarinet, and piano. Famous names drop like rain: Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Bix Beiderbecke, Jimmy McPartland, and Louis Armstrong. The musical influences on the two young men are legendary. When Benny and Teddy finally meet and record amazing hit music with drummer Gene Krupa as the Benny Goodman Trio, they still cannot perform together live in a segregated America until 1936. The language has an infectious rhythm: "Toes tapping, fingers snapping, listening." Sadly, narrator, Sean Crisden does not give this musical text its due. A more expressive vocal interpretation with much less repetitive syntax and more of a sense of surprise would fit the jazz theme. There are no special animated effects either, and the result is flat overall. Background music and crowd sounds give some impression of the wizardry of Benny's clarinet and Teddy's piano, but no additional resources are included, which is unfortunate. Useful when examining segregation in America or revealing our musical history; rely instead on the music itself to tell the incredible story of swing. VERDICT Buy this only as an additional resource to music history curriculum.-Lonna Pierce, MacArthur & Thomas Jefferson Elementary Schools, Binghamton, NY (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1936, the Benny Goodman Trio became the first interracial band to perform in public, with Benny Goodman (the son of Jewish immigrants) on clarinet and African-American Teddy Wilson on piano (Gene Krupa, on drums, completed the trio). Writing in punchy free verse that echoes the bounce of both men's music, Cline-Ransome traces Goodman and Wilson's parallel-but separate-paths to jazz fame, before eventually meeting in 1935. Working in watercolor outlined in loose pencil, Ransome strongly evokes the allure of music that Goodman and Wilson both felt as boys, as well as way jazz all but demanded people get up and move: "The stage was hot/ The dancer floor was hotter/ The music was hottest." Ages 8-12. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Benny Goodman was a working-class Jewish boy growing up in Chicago, while Teddy Wilson was a middle-class African American boy living in Tuskegee, Alabama. Both of them showed an early talent for music. Benny played the clarinet and Teddy the piano (plus violin, oboe, and clarinet). And they both loved jazz music. Jazz brought them together when their paths crossed at a party and they played together spontaneously to entertain the guests. Their styles melded so well that they soon began to record together (along with Gene Krupa on drums) as the Benny Goodman Trio, and in 1935 their first recordings (including "Body and Soul" and "After You've Gone") were huge hits. For a time, because of segregation, the Benny Goodman Trio performed onstage with a substitute white pianist, Jess Stacy (no slouch himself), but audiences could tell that the group didn't sound as good as its recordings, and in 1936 the Trio "ma[de] history as the first interracial band to perform publicly." The story is recounted here in short bursts of text, almost like jazz riffs, accompanied by pencil and watercolor illustrations that capture distinctive moments in the subjects' lives. An informative author's note gives more information on both men, a timeline, and capsule biographies of other significant jazz musicians of the time. kathleen t. horning (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
While a young Benny Goodman was growing up on the West Side of Chicago during the Roaring Twenties, Teddy Wilson was in Alabama, listening to Fats Waller. Music was a part of both boys' lives: Benny played the clarinet; Teddy was a piano player. This title tells their stories on alternating pages until they meet in New York City. Benny's clarinet is blowing all sweet / all dance / all white. Teddy's playing is all hot / all rhythm / all black. Initially, the duo jams and cuts records, but the musicians don't play together onstage: Audiences weren't ready for a black-and-white band. The endnotes tell a different story: it was Goodman, worried about his career, who didn't want to go onstage with Wilson until disappointed audiences walked out. Nevertheless, this introduces an important event in a snappy text that swings. Ransome's line-and-watercolor pictures also flow with movement and color. Kids drawn in by the story of the young artists will go on to ponder the history.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist