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    Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage As the First Black-and-White Jazz Band in History
    Unavailable
    Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage As the First Black-and-White Jazz Band in History
    Unavailable
    Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage As the First Black-and-White Jazz Band in History
    Audiobook11 minutes

    Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage As the First Black-and-White Jazz Band in History

    Written by Lesa Cline-Ransome

    Narrated by Sean Crisden

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    It wasn't soft/It wasn't black/It wasn't sweet/It wasn't white/It was swing. Brought together by the love of playing jazz music, Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when they formed the Benny Goodman Trio with Gene Krupa. This lush and lyrical picture book tells the story of how two musical prodigies from very different backgrounds - one a young black boy growing up in Tuskegee, Alabama, the other the son of struggling Russian-Jewish immigrants from the West Side of Chicago - were brought together by their love of music, and helped create the jazz style known as swing.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateDec 30, 2014
    ISBN9781633795228
    Unavailable
    Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson: Taking the Stage As the First Black-and-White Jazz Band in History
    Author

    Lesa Cline-Ransome

    Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of many picture books, including Young Pele: Soccer’s First Star and Light in the Darkness. She lives in Rhinebeck, New York, with her family.

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    Reviews for Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson

    4/5

    4 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      While I enjoyed the book, I found it kind of confusing with the back and forth between the artists. If you don't already know who they are you could very easily get lost in this book. The pictures were beautiful and you could really see the audience's love for the music they were playing. One thing the book left out and I would be really interested to know is how they came up with the name for the band? Was it due to racism prevalent in that time period or was Teddy on board with the name and didn't have much of an opinion?
    • 4/5
      This book tells the story of how Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson came together, breaking racial protocols, to perform jazz. Both musicians childhoods are told and how they met is also included. This book would be excellent to include during a lesson about segregation or civil rights. Also, it shows how different people can come together to accomplish extraordinary things. There are many literary elements found in the text, alliteration to name one.
    • 5/5
      This biography picture book is a dramatic and beautifully detailed story about the first white and black Jazz band in history. The illustrations and exciting plot line add to the overall enjoyment of the book. Seeing how race and culture did not effect these musicians is encouraging in promoting the underlying idea that race is just a color, and that you can accomplish anything if you set your mind to it.
    • 4/5
      The story of how jazz musicians Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when they formed the Benny Goodman Trio with Gene Krupa.
    • 3/5
      I had mixed feeling on this book. The books genre is historical fiction and is based on the first ever Black and White Jazz Band in History. The book tells how the band came together including how they met at a young age and learned to play instruments.  One thing I did not like about the book was the way the text was organized on the page. I found that it was sometimes hard for my eyes to follow the text and I think this could be difficult for young children when they are reading the book. The text is displayed very narrowly and only has 2 to 3 words per line. One thing I did like about the book was the timeline. It gives readers the visual image of the time line of the band as well as the location. The timeline ranges from Chicago's West Side Park in 1922 to the Congress Hotel in Chicago in 1936.
    • 4/5
      Subtitled “Taking the Stage as the First Black-and-White Jazz Band in History,” this book tells the story of how Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman broke the color barrier in entertainment when, along with Gene Krupa, they formed the Benny Goodman Trio.The story alternates between the childhoods of Wilson, a young black boy growing up in Tuskegee, Alabama, and Goodman, the son of struggling Russian-Jewish immigrants from the West Side of Chicago. The text explains how they each fell in love with music and studied and practiced and played whenever they could. Race divided their experiences however:“Benny’s clarinet blew
Into town/West Side, SouthSide, downtown
And out again
All sweet
All dance
All white
All the way to New York”“Teddy tickled the keys in Texas
In Nebraska
in Louisiana
All hot
All rhythm
All black
All the way to New York”When the two met in jam sessions and recording sessions in New York, they found they loved to play together. Goodman said “We were thinking with the same brain”:“It wasn’t soft
It wasn’t black
It wasn’t sweet
It wasn’t white
It was swing.”They decided to play together in public, getting Gene Krupa to join them on drums – “the three of us, as if we had been born to play this way.”Later they were joined by Lionel Hampton on vibraphone and they became a quartet. They performed in public for the firs time as an interracial band in 1939 at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Audiences loved them:“they blew
they tapped
they banged
they strummedThe stage was hot
The dance floor was hotter
The music was hottest.”An extended section at the end of the book provides more background on Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson, a time line, and a “Who’s Who” in jazz.The watercolor illustrations by James E. Ransome almost seem alive, as if the music is really playing and the dancers are really moving.Evaluation: This book not only introduces children to some great musicians, but shows that the passions and joy we can share by working together is so much more powerful and productive than the superficial things that divide us.