Benny Goodman was handed a clarinet at a Chicago synagogue because he was the smallest of three brothers enrolled in free music classes. This episode follows the ninth of 12 children from the Maxwell Street slums through classical lessons with Franz Schoepp of the Chicago Symphony, a union card at 13, the death of his father when Benny was 17, session work in New York, and the partnership with arranger Fletcher Henderson that defined his sound.

The conversation covers the disastrous 1935 cross-country tour, the Palomar Ballroom night that ignited the swing era thanks to a radio time-zone quirk, hiring Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton to integrate his small groups, the January 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, and the 45-minute jam that brought Charlie Christian’s electric guitar into the band. It also examines the decline of the big bands, his reinvention as a classical clarinetist who had his calluses surgically removed, the infamous glare known as the Ray, his secret philanthropy, and his 1962 State Department tour of the Soviet Union.

• Why Henderson’s call-and-response charts differed from polite sweet music
• Gene Krupa’s advice at the Palomar: fail playing the music you believe in
• How Goodman used his box-office power to defend an integrated bandstand
• Relearning the embouchure with Reginald Kell to premiere works by Copland and Bernstein
• Why the Nazi regime and fascist Italy banned jazz from the airwaves