Benny Goodman

While my mother dosed me with heaping helpings of soul, R&B and and rock & roll, dad was the jazzer in the family. My memories of listening to his LP of Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall concert go so far back they’re practically embryonic. The song I was particularly taken with was the 12 minute long “Sing, Sing, Sing”. While vinyl spun under needle, many was the night I would lie down on the floor with my eyeball just millimeters from the ruby-red “ON” light on my dad’s old Heathkit tube amplifier and let Benny and his gang transport me - such epic visuals that song would conjure up. Once I saw a wave of elephants storming over a barren horizon during Gene Krupa’s drum solo. In the mid ‘70s, when I was thirteen, Goodman came to town and it was natural that dad and I would go see him play. We sat close to the stage and it was informal enough that I got up, walked to the edge of the stage and shot 2 frames with my brand new Pentax K-1000. In my high school photo class I developed the film, my first time doing this. Impatiently deciding that the prescribed “30 minutes in 68 degree water” wash time was overkill I did some quick math and figured that 10 minutes in 100 degree water would work just fine. Well, I got it clean alright, I nearly boiled the emulsion off of the film base. I tried making prints but they looked like hell. Years went by, I became known for taking music photos and I grew curious as to where those negatives were — the beginning of my career — but they were nowhere to be found. Finally, in the late '90s, they showed up in the bottom of a box and I went in the darkroom and printed the best frame. Being a much better printer than I was as a teenager I was pretty satisfied with the results. But the question remains, why the hell didn’t I take my camera to the Lionel Hampton concert a couple years after Benny?

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Archival pigment print on baryta 315 gsm, acid-free, 100% cotton-fiber paper.

Signed on recto by photographer Jim Herrington.

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All photos and text © 2024 Jim Herrington

www.jimherrington.com

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