Music: Clarinetist's Progress

The five-inch shelf of jazz literature has been considerably increased in the last few weeks by Winthrop Sargeant's anatomy, Jazz: Hot and Hybrid, and Wilder Hobson's up-to-date critique, American Jazz Music. Last week a biography was added to the shelf—Benny Goodman's and Irving Kolodin's The Kingdom of Swing*—which reveals nearly all there is to reveal about Mr. Goodman's life and four-four time.

Of interest mainly to aficionados of America's native rhythm, the Goodman biography provides a play-by-play account of the only jazz artist who, without once compromising with tinhorn commercialism, battled his way...