Goodbye (Gordon Jenkins song)
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"Goodbye" (sometimes written "Good-Bye") is a song by American composer and arranger Gordon Jenkins, published in 1935. It became well known as the closing theme song of the Benny Goodman orchestra.
Jenkins had written the song when working with the Isham Jones orchestra, and Jones allegedly rejected it as it was "too sad". Music critic Alec Wilder described "Goodbye" as "as sad a song I know" and Leonard Feather called it among his "top ten songs it would be hardest to tire of hearing".[1]
Jenkins' son, the sportswriter Bruce Jenkins, wrote a biography of his father entitled Goodbye: In Search of Gordon Jenkins. While researching the biography, Jenkins interviewed the singer Martha Tilton, who had performed with the Benny Goodman orchestra. Tilton revealed that the song was written by Jenkins after the death of his first wife in childbirth.[dubious – discuss]
