Even a cursory list of Goodman’s achievements makes one sit up and take notice: as a soloist he defined the essence of the jazz clarinet as no other performer before or since; as a bandleader, he established standards of technical perfection that were the envy of his peers, while his influence in gaining widespread popularity for swing music was unsurpassed; a decade later he reformed his ensemble to tackle the nascent sounds of bop music—a move that few of his generation would have dared make; in the world of classical music, Goodman not only excelled as a performer, but also commissioned a
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