Trumpeter Harry James was uneasy as he warmed up backstage at New York's Carnegie Hall on the evening of January 16, 1938. "I feel like a whore in a church," he told a colleague. He had every reason to be nervous. Benny Goodman's swing band, with James on trumpet, was about to play a full-length concert-the first such performance ever given in America's most prestigious concert hall by a jazz group.
If anyone was prepared to bring jazz to Carnegie Hall, it was Benny Goodman. Known from...