Best Benny Goodman recordings

The sound track from the bio flick is pretty good, "The Benny Goodman Story". The recordings were made for the movie with mostly one time members of his band. The cd liner notes are very good but one tune from the original LP was deleted so it would fit on one cd. The LP can be found used and is pretty good.

Good Luck

A couple of "small group" Goodman CDs that I'm partial to are "After You've Gone: the orginal Benny Goodman trio and quartet sessions, vol 1" on RCA, and "The Benny Goonman Sextet featuring Charlie Christian" on Columbia. There are terrific performances on both CDs, and to hear Charlie Christian is always a treat.

I second any of the small group recordings with Charlie Christian.

From the heyday of Swing: 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert. Originally issue by Columbia on 78's - - reissued in the 6-eye era on LP and, I'd bet, now available on CD. A classic.

If you'd like to sample before buying, download *Sing, sing, sing* (live version) from iTunes.

sorry I forgot to mention that I have Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert double CD set.

I'll definitely check out the small group CDs.

Audphile - If small group combos are what you're after, keep in mind the (now oop) Mosaic 4-CD set - *Complete Capitol Small Group Recordings of Benny Goodman 1944-1955* (MD4-148). I've owned it on vinyl (6-LPs) for a good number of years and still give those records a spin from time to time. The transfer quality is good to excellent.

I have multi-disc (LP) boxed sets of the Carnigie Hall concert, and the 1938 Broadcasts. I prefer the performances on the Broadcast recordings. The Broadcast recordings were recorded "off-the-air" as a quality control project by the radio station, and the fidelity is excellent. Remember, this was AM radio.

Eldartford, thanks I will try to find these.

Thanks all!

Carnegie Hall Concert....Columbia set SL160
Broadcast recordings....Columbia set SL180

From the liner notes...
These recordings are made from "air checks" of late evening broadcasts from all over the country. Most of the original discs were taken off the air by a fan named Bill Savory, now a Columbia records engineer, who also did the remarkable editing job which produced these final master tapes. The final result is the most authentic original-Goodman sound ever captured on record, whether the band was broadcasting from the Manhattan Room of the Hotel Pennsylvania or the Palomar in Los Angeles.

The broadcasts gave us another advantage not possible in the case of the Carnegie Hall album. We frequently had six or seven versions of the same tune to choose from, so there was no need to put up with flagging inspiration or minor flaws.

Further reading of the liner notes reveals another reason why the Broadcast recordings are better.

The Carnegie Hall concert was recorded with one microphone hung way up in the ceiling. It was not planned to use the recording for a record release to the public. The Broadcast recordings benefited from careful microphone set up and balancing by the audio engineers of the radio stations doing the broadcast.

so what is the exact name of the broadcats CD?
thanks

Audphile1...Amazon.com has a CD set titled Carnegie Hall Concert with the same cover art as the LP set. But I don't know if the music is from the original recordings made in Carnegie, or from the broadcast recordings. The CD has a spoken introduction by Benny, which is on the Broadcast set, but the sequence of tracks does not match either LP set.

I encourage you to research this further and try to get the Broadcast recordings. It is worth the effort.

Perhaps other Audiogon members can contribute info.

I have that disc. I think that is not the Broadcast version you were referring to though. I'll keep on searching. Thanks!