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| | Bluebird Jazz (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06) |
 | | Goodman first made sides with such brilliant African-American instrumentalists as Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, and Frankie Newton, and then, within a few weeks, backed two vocalists?Bessie Smith, on her last record date, and Billie Holiday on her first. |
 | | Goodman put together a unit in 1934 for a series of NBC radio broadcasts, Let?s Dance; he hired Fletcher Henderson, the genius bandleader, to write his arrangements, but Goodman rehearsed the band to his exacting standards. |
 | | Goodman then took his orchestra, without Wilson, on the road and, on August 21, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles (and before a nationwide broadcast audience), was a crowd sensation: It was later said that this was the night that the Swing Era began. |
| www.bluebirdjazz.com /artists/artist.jsp?id=103857 (1031 words) |
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