Who Am I? April 2020 | Jewish Historical Society

I was born in Chicago into a family which eventually encompassed 11 other siblings (!). My dad, David, was a poor tailor who came from Warsaw and my mom, Dora, was an immigrant from Kovno, Lithuania. As kids, dad took us urchins to free band concerts. He also brought us to a local synagogue which offered free music lessons and lent out instruments for $.25 a week. Since I was the smallest kid, I was given the clarinet. I developed a love of music and joined a boy’s club band at a Jane Addams’ settlement house where the musical director also tutored me. Around that time a Chicago Symphony member further coached me on the clarinet.

By age 14 I had quit school and joined the American Federation of Musicians which put me on a musical career path. Sadly, the next year, my dad was killed in a streetcar accident and I was needed to help support my indigent family with my music. My later teen years were spent with numerous musicians and bands that would later become household names in the ‘big band era’. In 1928, at only 18 years of age, I released my first recording under my own name.

In the early 1930’s I met a socially-connected legendary music promoter, an extraordinary man who helped launch or promote careers from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan. In 1934 I led my first band and received natural recognition when I landed a weekly stint on an NBC Saturday radio show. I fell in love with my promoter’s sister and later married her. Teens, jitterbuggers of all ages, and jazz fans loved my music. I was a big hit at McFadden’s in Oakland and also at a famous dance hall on Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles that later burned down in 1939. Fletcher Henderson, a black bandleader, wrote a lot of my arrangements. I was known as a perfectionist and any musician who had the bad fortune to miss a note during a performance earned a withering glare from me that became known among band members as “the ray.”

I’m proud of the fact that my band was integrated, something that was rare in the 1930’s. I refused playing dates in the southern states unless all of my band members were allowed to perform with me. Some of my very talented African-American band members were later to form their own bands.

It is said that I made jazz a respectable art form here in the U.S. when I “raised the roof” at a legendary concert at Carnegie Hall on January 16th , 1938. As the big band era ended I sometimes transitioned from swinging on the “licorice stick” to playing virtuoso clarinet solos with major orchestras. I went so far as to commission classic clarinet compositions from the likes of Bela Bartok and Aaron Copland that I would perform with those same orchestras.

I appeared in 6 Hollywood films. The film industry even made a biographical film for general release about me! I was honored at the Kennedy Center for my lifetime musical achievements and even got an honorary PhD in music from Columbia.

In 1962 I was chosen to be a part of a cultural exchange with the Soviet Union. I performed in 32 ‘swing’ concerts there. Premier “K” attended my concert on opening night in Moscow but I’m convinced he didn’t really “get it” because he wasn’t known to be in the groove. I do have certain bona fides in New Jersey. I appeared and recorded at the Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove on September 20, 1941. In the 1980’s I contacted a Fair Lawn resident, the son of a children’s librarian in town, who was himself a sax player, a conductor and jazz historian. That fellow had played professionally with graduates of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands. He became the final leader of my orchestra, acted as my assistant and later as my manager.

I’m pretty sure you all know me by now even if you don’t happen to be musicians. That’s me in the photo below.

(1a)Who Am I?
(1b)What moniker was bestowed upon me in my heyday?
(1c)Who was that Chicago Symphony player that greatly enhanced my musical chops?
(1d)Who was my trombonist when I released my first recordings in 1928? Here’s a hint – he was to mysteriously disappear in a small plane over the English Channel during WWII.
(2a)What was the name of that socially-connected music promoter who did so much for me?
(2b) What was the name of that NBC radio show that brought me national recognition?
(2c) What was the name of that Los Angeles ballroom on Vermont Avenue that helped burnish my reputation?
(3)In my legendary and historic appearance at Carnegie Hall in January 1938 who played the xylophone, the trumpet and the drums that night?
(4)Name one of my African-American musicians from my 1930’s band.
(5a)Who portrayed me in the biographical movie of my life?
(5b)I appeared in several Hollywood movies. Name 2 of them.
(5c)Who was Premier “K”? You might remember him as a “shoe banger.”
(6) Who was that fine musician from Fair Lawn who led my final orchestra? I bequeathed him my favorite back brace. He was later chosen to appraise my archives.