Residence:
1917:1125 South Francisco Ave, Chicago, Illinois
1920: Chicago Ward 13, Cook (Chicago), Illinois

Left Russia to escape the pogroms (attacks on people of Jewish heritage). Had a career as a tailor in Russia but had to do hard labor in Chicago's stockyards and slaughterhouses.

David Goodman was a tailor from Warsaw. He met Dora Rezinski, who was from Kaunas in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Chicago before Benny was born. A working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, 'Downbeat', Feb 8, 1956); "...Pop worked in the stockyards, shovelling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he'd come home at the end of the day exhausted, stinking to high heaven, and when he walked in it made me sick. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the idea of Pop every day standing in that stuff, shoveling it around".

David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident shortly after Benny joined the Pollack band and had urged his father to retire, now that he (Benny) and his brother (Harry) were doing well as professional musicians. According to James Lincoln Collier ("Benny Goodman and the Swing Era", Oxford University Press 1989): "Pop looked Benny in the eye and said, 'Benny, you take care of yourself, I'll take care of myself.'"

Collier continued: "It was an unhappy choice. Not long afterwards, as he was stepping down from a street car - according to one story - he was struck by a car. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital the next day. It was a bitter blow to the family, and it haunted Benny to the end that his beloved father had not lived to see the enormous success he, and through him some of the others, made of themselves. It is, truly, a sad story."

Member of Drohitchin synagogue in the late 1920's (Chicago)

Alternate Date of Death:
December 9, 1929