In 1935, the clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman, aged just twentysix, left New York with his fourteenpiece “swing” band and, traveling in a ragtag group of cars, headed for the huge Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. It was not an easy trip. There were half a dozen dismal, sparsely attended onenighters and three weeks at a dance hall in Denver, where the band was forced to play waltzes, tangos, and novelty numbers. On the opening night at the Palomar, the band played ballad numbers in the first set, and there was little response from the dancers. Then one of the musicians said, if they were going to bomb again they might well do it in style. So Goodman called for his hot, often uptempo arrangements, many of them by the ingenious black bandleader and arranger Fletcher Henderson, and the kids stopped dancing, clustered around the bandstand, and began roaring. Before the weeks at the Palomar were over, it was clear that Goodman had suddenly made jazz—still a suspect and largely subliminal American folk music, despite the brilliant inventions during the previous decade of Jelly Roll Morton and others—into a popular music.
Goodmans surprising ways continued. In 1936, he shook up the white entertainment establishment by hiring two black musicians—the elegant pianist Teddy Wilson and the plunging vibraphonist Lione Hampton. (To be sure, Wilson and Hampton did not play in the band; instead, they appeared with Goodman and the drummer Gene Krupa during intermissions.) A year later, when the band went into the Paramount Theater in New York for three weeks, legions of kids appeared, and a screaming, dancing riot nearly took place. It was the first great American show frenzy, and it prepared the way for the Sinatra frenzy of 1947, and for all the Beatles frenzies, and for all the mindless rockborne frenzies of the Seventies and Eighties.
Then, on the night of January 16, 1938, Goodman, challenging the longhairs, took his band into a soldout Carnegie Hall. The big band played a dozen numbers, the trio two numbers, and the quartet five numbers. Despite the immediate rumblings from Olin Downes, the Timess classical music critic (“The playing last night, if noise, speed and beat, all old devices, are heat, was “hot” as it could be, but nothing came of it all, and in the long run it was decidedly monotonous”), Goodmans concert moved jazz even further up the American popular register. ［412 words］
小题1: This passage is mainly
A a general review of Jazz music.
B a biography of Benny Goodman.
C about the origin of American folk music.
D about how jazz became popular in America.
小题2: Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?
A The bands first music show in Los Angles was an immediate success.
B Goodman is considered the father of Jazz music.
C Benny Goodman was unknown to public when he left New York.
D The band scheduled to play waltzes, tangos and novelty numbers at a dance hall in Denver.
小题3: It could be inferred from the passage that
A Jazz is a style of music native to America.
B Classic music had become outdated at Goodmans time.
C Morton and Goodman were contemporaries.
D Goodman was the first bandleader who hired Black musicians in 1930s.
小题4: The phrase “shake up” (Line 1,Paragraph 2) in the context probably means
A to give a very unpleasant shock.
B to make changes to an organization.
B to get rid of a problem.
D to point out, designate.
小题5: Towards Goodmans music show frenzy, Olin Downes, the classical music critic has
A approving attitude. B satirizing attitude.
C regretting mind. D exaggerated tone. |