January 16, 1938: Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall

January 16, 1938: A concert is held at Carnegie Hall, the famous classical music palace in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. But it's not classical that holds court: For the 1st time in the building's history, it's jazz.

There's an old joke: A young man walks up to an older man on the streets of New York, and asks, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" And the older man says, "Practice, my boy, practice!"

In fact, in spite of the building's prestige, no amount of talent is necessary to perform at Carnegie Hall: As with pretty much any concert venue in the world, all you have to do is pay the rental fee and choose an open date to play.

The performers on this evening were the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Goodman, then 27 years old, was a Jewish clarinetist from Chicago, and his band had been successful for about 3 years already, to the point where he was able to take the bold step of racially integrating it.

Goodman led his Orchestra through some of the biggest names in jazz, playing songs by Count Basie (who sat in on piano to play his best-known song, "One O'Clock Jump"), Duke Ellington ("Blue Reverie"), Fats Waller ("Honeysuckle Rose"), Johnny Green ("Body and Soul") and Edgar Sampson ("Stompin' at the Savoy").

They also played popular standards written down the block on the stretch of Broadway, just Uptown from the Theater District, known as "Tin Pan Alley": George and Ira Gershwin ("The Man I Love" and "I Got Rhythm"), Irving Berlin ("Blue Skies,"), and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart ("Blue Moon").

They also played "Life Goes to a Party," which Goodman had written with his trumpeter, Harry James; and their best-known number, written by Louis Prima: "Sing Sing Sing (with a Swing)."

The concert proved so successful that, twice, right before Christmas that year, and again the next year, Goodman returned to Carnegie Hall as the headliner for a concert titled "From Spirituals to Swing," bringing on Basie, Big Joe Turner, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, and other luminaries of black music.

A live album, The Famous Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, would be released by Columbia Records in 1950, and it became the 1st jazz record to sell over 1 million copies. Goodman lived until 1986.

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January 16, 1938 was a Sunday. It was the off-season for Major League Baseball and the NFL, and the NBA hadn't been founded yet. But there were 4 games played in the National Hockey League that night, a few blocks away at what would later be called "the old Madison Square Garden." Not only were both New York teams in action that night, they played each other:

* The New York Rangers beat the New York Americans, 4-0. Despite this result, the Amerks would go on to knock the Rangers out of the Playoffs.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 at the Boston Garden.

* The Montreal Maroons and the Detroit Red wings played to a tie, 1-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 7-2 at the Chicago Stadium. Despite this shellacking, the Hawks would go on to beat the Leafs in the Stanley Cup Finals.