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STILL, Benny was far from satisfied. He had made friends O with one of the world's finest classical clarinet players, Reginald Kell, and in 1949 he began taking lessons from him.
Benny had been taught to hold the mouthpiece between his front teeth and his lower lip, while Kell used only his lips.
Learning to double-lip like Kell meant learning the clarinet all over again from scratch; it brought a different set of facial muscles into play, and required a subtly different fingering technique. Benny had his old finger calluses removed by a doctor, and then buckled down, at 40, to relearning his lifework, acquiring a new set of calluses and an even more controlled technique.
Classical performances keep Benny fairly occupied nowadays; he solos with symphony orchestras around the country about once every two weeks. But at the drop of a downbeat, Benny still swings back to his first love. "After the concert," he grins, "we may have a little jam session." He dreams, sometimes, of getting the stars of his old band together again: "Of course, there might be a little less hair all around, but would we play as well? Could be!"