Ladies and Gentlemen, Benny Goodman

It happened 40 years ago. Some of you haven’t even been alive that long. 1981. That’s when my husband Rob and I started dating. I can see that you want to hear the story, so I’d be happy to tell it. We attended a very small liberal arts college in rural South Carolina. Rob and I had many mutual friends and hung out with the same groups of people, but we didn’t really know each other. We found ourselves around each other sometimes, but didn’t interact much.

In January, our college had a month-long academic period, called Interim, which fell between the fall and spring semesters. During Interim, students took alternative classes for credit. Classes included remedial education to make up work and advanced topic classes to get ahead, as well as, unusual classes on and off campus, like studying Holograms with lasers, studying Exercise Science on ski trips, taking an Art trip to NYC, taking a Ecology excursion to the Galapagos Islands, and others. A circle of my friends (including Rob) and I signed up for an on-campus class to study Jazz Music. We had a fun, progressive, interesting, mellow, cool, hip, snappy, swinging time as we sat around and listened to different styles of jazz. Our professor was a quiet, reserved man who loved introducing the music and exploring its nuances. A big event was scheduled for the end of Interim class—an overnight weekend trip about 2 hours away, to attend a concert of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra with special guest Benny Goodman. It would be a wonderful opportunity to hear a legendary musician in the twilight of his career.

As we prepared for the trip, our professor gave us information about the concert we would be attending. Benny Goodman was very old, in poor health, and rarely performed, so this would be a very special treat. Many esteemed guests and concert goers would be at the performance. We should dress nicely, as it would be a fairly formal affair. We should conduct ourselves appropriately, remember our manners, and be respectful, etc. We, the college students, collectively raised a dismissive hand and said, “Uh Huh. Yeah. Sure. Got It.”

On the day of the concert, we traveled to Charlotte NC, and arrived at the concert hall. Once we were seated at our large circular table, it didn’t take long for someone in our party of 8 or so, to notice that there was FREE WINE. There was probably free food, and other drinks, too, but the focus of our attention was the fact that there was FREE WINE. It was convenient that we were all of legal drinking age. As the orchestra began to play, we settled in to enjoy the music. And, we began to enjoy the FREE WINE.  Servers filled FREE WINE glasses at a serving table. It turned out, that when you wanted to get another glass of FREE WINE, you didn’t refill your empty glass, you just took a new prefilled glass from the serving table. These weren’t actually glasses, they were plastic, disposable wine cups. It didn’t occur to us that you could throw away the disposable wine glasses, so, instead, our table became cluttered with empty plastic glasses. Then, someone realized that you could unhook the two pieces of the disposable wine glass. We quickly learned that you could build a tower by stacking all the bottoms together, and another tower by stacking all the tops together. And, we realized that when the tower got too tall, you could start another tower, and so on and so on.  We noticed that concert-goers at other tables also stacked their empty wine glasses. Their stacks were 3 or 4 glasses high. Our stacks were much higher. By a lot.

I have no idea where our professor was, during all of our FREE WINE getting and tower building.  He was not sitting with us. I’m sure he must have noticed the frenzy of activity swirling around our table. We were not being obnoxious, but, I can’t say we were remembering our manners. Between getting up to collect FREE WINE, getting up in groups to make bathroom runs, stacking and reorganizing the growing trophy towers—there was a lot going on at our table.

Now, the Benny Goodman part of the concert was very disappointing. After the orchestra played a full program of swing/jazz pieces, it was time for BG. He had a great deal of difficulty getting out on the stage when he was summoned to play. The orchestra played a rousing intro, then came to something of a pause, which gave him about 10 seconds to play a series of notes. Then, the orchestra kicked in again, coming to full crescendo, then pausing again for BG to play his short combination. This pattern repeated throughout the piece, so that, all told, the song was about 90% orchestra and 10% Goodman. Then he left the stage. That was the extent of his ‘performance’.  In retrospect, I guess we should have appreciated the fact that we were able to see him perform at all. But, we were expecting more, and, we were disgruntled. We thought we had been short-changed. 

Fueled with our FREE WINE, we approached the stage at the end of the concert to see if we could get BG’s autograph. The security guard was having none of that, and shooed us away. I won’t say that an argument ensued, but, let's just say that we were not holding hands with the guard singing Kumbayah together. We persisted for a bit, then, eventually, gave up and left, off to our lodging for the night. We returned to campus the next day.  During the final few days of wrapping up our Interim Jazz Music class, our professor never mentioned the concert, not once. I guess we had misbehaved and he wanted to forget about the whole thing.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be telling you about Rob and Gwen. We started talking on this trip to Charlotte and started to make a connection with each other. Perhaps the FREE WINE egged us on. We look back fondly on the Benny Goodman concert as the start of our relationship. We began to date, then had years of on-again, off-again times, but finally landed on-again and got married. And, the rest, as they say, is history. Recently, I found an old certificate from our college days. It was an award bestowed on us from our Greek social clubs (not exactly sorority or fraternity, but similar). Our Greek organizations, at an end of year ceremony, presented us with "The Puppy Love Award.”  

Benny Goodman might speculate that Rob and I were "Runnin' Wild", or "Stompin At the Savoy", or "Jumpin' At the Woodside". But, we were just beginning our story-- a background of music, a little bit of misbehaving, and a lot of love.