Herbie Hancock meets Benny Goodman

Herbie Hancock filled in for Hank Jones during a Benny Goodman Sextet engagement at The Rainbow Room in early June, 1966.

In his autobiography Possibilities, Hancock wrote of this experience:

My first thought was that Benny Goodman was famous for swing music from the 30’s. He was a legend, but did it really make sense for me to go backward in that way? But another voice in my head said How cool is that! I knew Benny was a great clarinetist, and I was curious about how I’d respond to his kind of music. I told Miles about the offer, and he just said, “Take it. He’s a great player.” So I agreed to do it. The band consisted of…
[Benny Goodman, clarinet
Doc Cheatham, trumpet
Les Spann, guitar
Al Hall, bass
Morey Feld, drums
Annette Saunders, vocals]
… And I’ll tell you something – Benny could play. I threw a couple of curves in there, nothing out of context but not your usual rhythms, and he just tore right through them. Every time I’d push a little bit to the edge, Benny would run with it, sometimes doing things I’ve never heard of clarinetist do. I had judged him based on the kind of music he usually played, but his scope was much greater than I ever expected. He surprised me, and we really had a great time playing those gigs. It was cool.
I wasn’t completely sure how Benny felt about my playing, but a week or so later Lionel Hampton called me again, to try to convince me to quit Miles’s band and join Benny’s. I was really flattered to get that call, but of course I didn’t want to leave the quintet. But the whole experience with playing with Benny and getting that offer was so much more than my young mind had imagined. I was really glad I’d taken the leap despite my misgivings.
Here is what exists.

Benny Goodman, clarinet
Doc Cheatham, trumpet
Herbie Hancock, piano
Les Spann, guitar
Al Hall, bass
Morey Feld, drums
Annette Saunders, vocals
The music is superimposed over footage of a Belgian rehearsal and concert that Goodman did a couple of months later, with pianist Bernie Leighton in the band.
Unissued for twenty years plus, it was finally shared in one of several albums I put together for Yale Archives as part of their Benny Goodman Collection.

Видео Herbie Hancock meets Benny Goodman канала Loren Schoenberg