This sextet was founded to recreate the music of the classic Benny Goodman Sextet which between 1939 and 1942 boasted such larger than live names as Charlie Christian, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. 4beat6 also plays repertoire of the Benny Goodman Quartet with Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton and Gene Krupa. "4-beat" was the rhythm that, according to Benny Goodman himself, was invented by Ben Pollack in the early twenties. The key was the switch from the clumsy 2/4 beat that originated with the tuba and the banjo to the more supple 4/4 beat appropriate to string bass and guitar. It became the beat of the music that under the name "swing" suddenly became America's biggest craze in 1934. From 1935 onwards, Benny Goodman started to combine bigband preformances with interludes by small combo's. Blind to racial barriers - "I sell music, not prejudice" - he included black musicians in these settings. In 1939 his advisor and propagator John Hammond presented him with the first great soloist on the electric guitar Charlie Christian. The joining of forces with Count Basie - also a protegee of Hammond - was a logical coincidence.