Jim F.
Heh, I did say I was paraphrasing from a semi-remembered quote. "Benny Goodman" was just the first name that popped into mind for a big pop music icon of the period.
Perhaps, a book I need to finish, "The Cultural Front, " by Michael Denning on Popular Front culture, has details on Goodman.
(I hear that John Hammond's autobio is good on the CPUSA and, 'er, "cultural workers, " in the 30's. In my boxes of sectariana, I have a few copies of the New Masses. In one there is an ad for the forthcoming Carnegie Hall concert produced by Hammond that would have imcluded Robert Johnson."From Spirituals To Swing, " if memory serves.
A few yrs. ago, btw, in the newspapers there was a story that said that Goodman did not die in a plane crash on the way to a USO show but, of a heart attack in a bordello. Michael Pugliese