Benny Goodman: The Man in the Moonglow

Hear the radio episode here: In the late 1930s, a bespectacled white man who played the clarinet was a teen idol. That was Benny Goodman, and he got to be that way from leading a quartet with Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa — jazz’s first major mixed-race band. In a special stage show written by Geoffrey Ward and narrated by Wendell Pierce, a young band with a rotating cast of clarinetists tells the whole story at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Jazz Night In America learns about t