Benny Goodman / Wardell Gray - Back Home In Indiana / Donna Lee

Back Home In Indiana (19480601) 0:00
Back Home In Indiana (Donna Lee) (19480603) 1:59
Donna Lee (19480605) 4:32
Donna Lee (19480626) 6:53

Since breaking up his big band 18 months before, Benny Goodman had been resident in California, broadcasting and recording with studio groups. Few had imagined that the 39-year-old “King of Swing” would ever go on the road with a steady jazz outfit again and, even less, that he would take interest in the new style of jazz called ‘bop”. Moreover, the septet had some personnel of particular interest. First, it brought Goodman and pianist Teddy Wilson together again after several years and, second, there were two newcomers to be featured.

Formerly with the Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine orchestras, tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray (February 13, 1921 - May 25, 1955) was a top name among the modern musicians in southern California. Gray’s melodically inventive and rhythmic playing, influenced both by Lester Young and the mentors of the bebop-school, made quite an impression on Benny Goodman when they met at a Just Jazz concert late in December, 1947. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jl0c_ti6gk

Around the same time, Goodman also heard the 25-year-old Swede Stan Hasselgard (October 4, 1922 - November 23, 1948) playing at Club 47, a small jam-joint Studio City. At that time, he started to change his style. Hasselgard, who has taught himself to play and who couldn’t read music very well, began to study the developed chording practiced by the bebop stylists. “He sort of modelled his playing after me, but he was into a more modern vein”, Goodman told 34 years later. “I was intrigued by the way he could play on show tunes such as All the Things You Are…”

During the spring of 1948, Goodman repeatedly invited Hasselgard to his home in Pacific Palisades outside of Los Angeles. They began to play together informally, and Benny soon got the idea to add a rhythm section.
At first, a more spectacular premiere was planned: a Carnegie Hall concert was scheduled for May 10th. But the ticket sales were discouraging, and Benny wouldn’t play for anything but a full house at the venue of one of his most triumphant successes ten year before. Instead, the rehearsals went on for another couple of weeks.

Frank Palumbo’s Click restaurant in Philadelphia was quite crowded when Benny Goodman opened on May 24, 1948. Many of Benny’s fans and associates had come in from New York to catch the new septet, curiously about its reputedly modern approach to jazz.
Back in New York, Goodman rented a huge dance hall at Westchester County Center in White Plains, a one-hour train ride from the city, to play weekends with a slightly reformed unit. In mid July, still with no success on his hand in spite of heavy advertising over the radio, Benny got tired of the whole thing, broke up the band and left the west coast.

Aside from a V-disc session with a later version of the band, no studio recordings were made due to a recording ban proclaimed by the American Federation of Musicians. The music was recorded off the air (CBS and NBC broadcasts) on acetate discs and, in a couple of cases, paper-based magnetic tape; in spots, the sound quality might leave a lot to be desired, but this is fully compensated by the musical qualities and the historical significance of the material.

— Lars Westin's liner notes for Stan Hasselgard & Benny Goodman - At Click 1948

See full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx4pOjv1FM0