Artie Shaw, Bandleader, Composer and Wizard of the Clarinet, Is Dead at 94 - Obituary (Obit); Biography - NYTimes.com Artie Shaw, Bandleader, Composer and Wizard of the Clarinet, Is Dead at 94 By JOHN S. WILSON Published: December 31, 2004 Artie Shaw, the jazz clarinetist and big-band leader who successfully challenged Benny Goodman's reign as the King of Swing with his recordings of ''Begin the Beguine,'' ''Lady Be Good'' and ''Star Dust'' in the late 1930's, died yesterday at his home in Newbury Park, Calif. He was 94. He apparently died of natural causes, his lawyer, Eddie Ezor, told The Associated Press. In the Royalty of Swing Artie Shaw's virtuosity on his instrument, his groups' highly original arrangements and his explosively romantic showmanship made him one of the most danced-to bandleaders of swing and one of the most listened-to artists of jazz.

He quit performing in 1954 , but the many re-releases of his discs, a ghost band, and his informed but often sardonic comments on music and many other subjects kept him in the public ear. Although his musical career closely paralleled that of Benny Goodman, his archrival, who died in 1986, the two men had little in common in their approaches to music. ''The distance between me and Benny,'' Mr. Shaw said several years ago, ''was that I was trying to play a musical thing, and Benny was trying to swing. Benny had great fingers; I'd never deny that. But listen to our two versions of 'Star Dust.' I was playing; he was swinging.'' Mr. Shaw impressed and amazed clarinetists of all schools. Barney Bigard, the New Orleans clarinetist who was Duke Ellington's soloist for 14 years, said he considered Mr. Shaw the greatest clarinetist ever. Phil Woods, a saxophonist of the bebop era, took Charlie Parker as his inspiration on saxophone, but he modeled his clarinet playing on Mr. Shaw's.

John Carter, a leading post-bop clarinetist, said he took up the instrument because of Mr. Shaw. And in 1983, when Franklin Cohen, the principal clarinetist of the Cleveland Orchestra, was to be featured playing Mr. Shaw's Concerto for Clarinet, he listened to Mr. Shaw's recording of the work and said he found his playing unbelievable. ''Shaw is the greatest player I ever heard,'' he said. ''It's hard to play the way he plays. It's not an overblown orchestral style. He makes so many incredible shadings.'' Mr. Shaw and Mr. Goodman were born a year apart (Goodman in 1909; Mr. Shaw on May 23, 1910); both had Jewish immigrant parents and grew up in the ghettos of major American cities. Mr. Shaw grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Goodman on the west side of Chicago. They began playing professionally as teenagers, and by 1926 they were both far from home performing with major bands of the day: Goodman in Venice, Calif., with Ben Pollack; Mr.

Shaw in Cleveland with Austin Wylie. In the Depression era, they settled in New York City and were the top two choices for the woodwind sections of radio-network and recording-studio orchestras. Frequently, they sat side by side in these ensembles. By then, however, Mr. Shaw had decided music was a dead end. He intended to be a writer, and he had become a voracious reader. At band rehearsals, his music rack often held a book he was reading along with the compositions he was playing. But his interests reverted to music after he was asked to play at a concert at the Imperial Theater in New York in May 1935. It was called a swing concert, and it included well-known swing bands like the Casa Loma Orchestra and the bands of Tommy Dorsey and Bob Crosby. Although Mr. Shaw was not yet known to much of the public, he was asked to put together a small group to play while the band onstage was changed. ''Just for kicks, I thought I'd write a piece for clarinet and string quartet, plus a small rhythm section,'' Mr. Shaw recalled.

''Nobody had ever done that, sort of a jazz chamber-music thing.'' An Instant Hit His Interlude in B flat brought down the house. The audience refused to stop applauding, but Mr. Shaw had nothing else to play because this was the only thing he had written for the group. Finally, they played it again. On the basis of this success, he was urged to form a band. He was not interested until he learned that with a successful band he could earn as much as $25,000 in six months, which was the amount he needed to complete his education. The band he formed was an enlargement of the group he had used at the concert: a string quartet and his clarinet, with one trumpet, one saxophone and a rhythm section. But when he arrived in the real world of dance halls and nightclubs, he found himself bucking a tide that clamored for what he later described as ''chewing drummers and loud swing fanaticism.'' So he formed a new band with the same instrumentation as Goodman's, promising it would be ''the loudest band in the whole damn world.'' With the new ensemble, he got a new name.

Originally named Arthur Arshawsky, he had already shortened that to Art Shaw professionally. But when he became a bandleader on radio, there were complaints that an announcement of his name sounded like a sneeze. So he made one more change, to Artie Shaw. As this band developed during a long run at the Roseland-State Ballroom in Boston, the original concept changed to a concentration on smoothly swinging treatments of the music of Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Vincent Youmans and others. What 'The Beguine' Began Book Review of Artie Shaw biography | Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review By Tom Nolan W.W. Norton, 2010 Who is Artie Shaw ? This is a legitimate question for any young person, but also a valid request from anyone who tried to follow the man’s career. From his birth as Avraham Ben-Yizhak Arshawsky in the New York City of 1910, to his passing in Newbury Park, California, in 2004, the man who eventually chose to be Artie Shaw was the living embodiment of one of his own favorite clichés: watch what you dream for, you may get it.

The title of Tom Nolan’s new biography is half of another favorite Shaw maxim. As a creative musician, Shaw believed, you made ‘three chords for beauty’s sake, and the fourth to pay the rent’. Shaw’s voice appears quite frequently throughout the book. The quotes come from his own excellent memoir, The Trouble With Cinderella, published in 1952 and only occasionally available since then. There are also no less than sixteen magazine and newspaper pieces by Artie Shaw. Nolan himself conducted extensive interviews with Shaw from 1990 until right before his passing. While each quote is sourced in the notes in the back of the book, there is precious little in the text itself that indicates what time period that a particular observation comes from. This fact can create an obstacle to answering the question posed at the top of this review. In the decade from 1935 to 1945, the way many Americans heard their chords, for beauty and to pay the rent, was in front of a ballroom bandstand; dancing, and frequently just listening to one of the dozens of big bands that crisscrossed the country. Some were so-called ‘territorial’ bands that stayed in one region.

With the rise of radio ‘remote’ broadcasts, a band’s music could become known from coast to coast, building an audience of dancers and record buyers. There were so-called sweet bands, such as Guy Lombardo’s, that played genteel pop music for society events. Then there were the pure swing bands, that featured instrumental and vocal soloists that drew on America’s distinctive musical creation, jazz. These bands used improvisation among soloists, and among the arrangers, who crafted the pop favorites of the day in a fashion that featured the talents of the bandleaders, which with few exceptions (Jimmy Lunceford, Andy Kirk ), were instrumentalists. Artie Shaw joined this scene through a curious series of events that almost ended his career before it got started. Starting as a saxophonist, Shaw played with several territorial bands, winding up in Cleveland. Then, on a bored whim, he entered a newspaper contest to promote airplane races to be held in Cleveland. By submitting only the title of a song celebrating flying, (Artie’s submission was “Song of the Skies”) and a 150 word essay, Artie won an eleven day trip to Hollywood. The New York boy stuck in Cleveland had found an escape route.

Joining a band in California, Shaw wound up on a tour that brought him to New York, where an event occurred that nearly derailed his life completely. After a surprise reunion with a girlfriend from Cleveland, Artie was showing her his old hometown in his new red roadster when a yacht chef stepped off the curb in front of Shaw’s car and was killed. The hit-and-run incident was reported to police . Though he was cleared of any criminal charges, Shaw wound up named in a civil suit for eighty thousand dollars. Since Artie was under twenty-one, his mother was sued too, and circumstances forced the two of them to share an apartment, and devote every penny of their combined incomes (Mrs. Arshawsky was a seamstress) to pay off the damages. When Shaw’s band finished their New York engagement and returned to California, the reedman was stranded without a job. He had to wait six months to qualify for a New York musician’s union card. With his life at an impossibly low ebb, he took to wandering the streets at night with his clarinet. Author Nolan relates a turning point in a career about to end at its inception.

The spot Shaw found was a basement club down two flights of stairs, marked by an outside canopy. He stood on the sidewalk and listened, fascinated, to the sound of a pianist playing some sort of ragtime, it sounded like, but with a very driving beat. “I thought, ‘Oooh, what the hell is that ?’The guy was playing his ass off, you know, really great piano.” After a while the music stopped, and a big black fellow about forty-three, came outside, wearing a derby hat and smoking a cigar. I said, ‘Who’s that cat in there playin’ ? That’s great shit!’ He says ‘You lookin’ at him.’ I said, You’re kiddin’ me! Are you the guy?’ He said ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Can I sit in?’ He says, ‘That your horn?’ He talked ‘haaawn.’ He says, ‘Sure’’” Shaw went downstairs and inside.

“I was the only white guy in the place, and I felt very self-conscious about it; but after a while, it was all right” The club’s piano was a beat-up wreck; an old scarred upright with chipped keys, and the whole front part missingso the hammers were exposed. That didn’t bother this fellow; he made it sound great. He knew what he was doing. The two men, both seated, made music just for themselves, and whoever else was around. “ . He had a peculiar way of playing.” Shaw said, “not like anything I’d ever heard. Riffs that were so strange, changing keys in the middle, and coming back. He was very interesting.” Willie “the Lion” Smith was the man’s name, and it was clear he was born to play the piano. “He’d sit very straight, “ Art said, “and his fingers would do these things. He’d make these hawking noises—hok, hok, hok’— off beat; I figured that’s why they called him ‘the Lion’ Haw-haw-haw, like a little roar. He was quite a guy, absolutely natural.

He had this ability” The Lion’s Music drew from many traditions; ragtime, Victorian parlor piano, German classical. He said practicing Bach strengthened his left hand. Strains and patterns of American impressionists such as MacDowell could be heard in his compositions; yet he was as powerful a stride man as his buddy James P. Johnson. Willie borrowed from what he liked but his playing was all his own. Shaw’s career survived the lawsuit, the unasked–for reunion with his mother, and the waiting period for his union card. Soon he was signing on with the big names of the era: Tommy Dorsey, a master trombonist, took him on in early editions of the band that eventually brought up a skinny young singer named Frank Sinatra. Shaw also used his skills doubling on saxophone and clarinet to land jobs on the many radio programs that broadcast live from New York. It was in that environment that he occasionally worked with the man whose name would forever be linked with his. Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw were rivals from the mid thirties until Goodman’s death in 1986.

Although cordial to each other, competition for record sales, musical reputation, and sidemen for their respective bands gave their personal encounters a raw edge. According to Shaw, The tone of this relationship was established early on. “ I used to play lead alto; Benny played second alto—he had a lousy saxophone sound; terrible. And we were playin’ a program together one time. There was a part written in an arrangement, piece was ‘Lover—dum-da, dum da dum da, dum da dum—lead alto, playing a sort of , obligato, against the brass. It was in my part; I was playin’ lead. And it was a nice sounding thing; radio music was so awful, mostly, that it was always kind of marvelous to have something that you could play with a little sense of music.So we played it, went through part of a rehearsal; and at one point, Benny said ‘Hey Pops, lemme—lemme play that.’ I said , ‘Sure. Take it.’ I didn’t care; we were all getting union scale. So I handed him the part, and we went into it again.

And the leader, I forget who it was, said, ‘Who’s playin’that?’ And I—leaned back. Benny said, ‘I am.’ ‘ Give it back to Artie.’ “Benny always remembered that; bothered him a lot…. He didn’t blame me; he just—knew he didn’t make it. That was galling. But he had a lousy sound, on an alto; just didn’t sound good. And I was a very good alto player.” Though the Goodman band broke through first, primarily through their historic broadcasts from the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, the years 1935-39 saw Shaw’s new band join Goodman’s as one of the iconic groups of the era. Shaw’s breakthrough hit was a forgotten four year old Cole Porter tune, initially issued as the ‘b’ side of a single. The ‘hit’ side was intended to be Indian Love Call, complete with Goodman-styled jungle drums and ‘cheep cheep’ vocals interjected by the entire band. Instead Begin the Beguine became the hit.

After several years of delivering his hit from every bandstand in America, Shaw got fed up, blasted his fan as ‘morons’ in an interview, and quit his band in the middle of an engagement at Manhattan’s Hotel Pennsylvania. This period is the most demanding for author Nolan, as he must juggle Shaw’s attempts to become a serious writer (it seems he was always a serious reader), a farmer, and a film producer with the endless parade of Shaw’s wives. Despite not being a musician, Nolan does a fine job pointing out the peaks of Shaw’s musical endeavors. Signature hits like Frenesi and Stardust are examined both in terms of their popularity and their musical qualities. His 1945 band (which featured another Shaw walkout, as he sought to rescue his marriage to Ava Gardner) is assessed fairly, as is his 1949 unit, the most musically ambitious of all his large ensembles. That band, featuring soloists like saxophonists Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, and featuring arrangements from forward-hearing writers like Eddie Sauter and George Russell, went crashing to earth.

Despite the robust postwar economy, returning servicemen put their nest eggs into new houses and cars, rather than nights at the local dance hall. Big bands and ballrooms went hand in hand into the sunset. By 1953 even the venerable Count Basie , whose big band roots went back to 1933, was fronting a sextet. Nolan rightfully saves his most careful writing in describing Shaw’s final recording sessions with his small group, the Gramercy 5 (named after a New York phone exchange). After six weeks of paid rehearsals, the last of Shaw’s performing groups, featuring vibes, guitar, bass, drums and the remarkable Hank Jones on piano, (who has recently passed away, like Shaw, in his nineties), went into the studio and recorded some sides for the ages. At four o’clock every morning after their last Embers set, the men went to Fine Sound at 711 Fifth Avenue, ordered coffee and Danish, and began to play while the tape rolled.

Using a Buffet clarinet with a “more intimate, woody sound” than his usual Selmer, Shaw took care not to overblow the other instruments.” In fact, he wrote, “most of the playing I did with that group was so pianissimo that I had to hold the instrument very close to the mikeand keep the volume way down to where I used just enough breath to keep the reed vibrating… On ballads…where I was on the extreme range of not being heard at all, the result was a warm, highly emotional sound that I don’t think can be done much better on a clarinet.” Nothing provoked that excellence more than a ballad. This Gramercy 5 did a number of them: an “Imagination” in which Shaw’s flowing ad libs seemed a metaphor of the title; a “Don’t Take Your Love From Me” during which Shaw poured forth a cascading fountain of gorgeous phrases; a confessional “I’ve Got A Crush on You,” in which Art’s fervent clarinet seemed to conjure a state of besotted infatuation; and two breathtaking versions of “Autumn Leaves,” each full of startling beauty.

These incredible recordings somehow managed not to be issued until 1992, and they are again, currently out of print, as is Shaw’s hand –picked boxed set Self Portrait which was nominated for two Grammies in 2003 and still managed to drift o/p. (For those diligent enough, the two sets Last Recordings Volumes 1& 2 can be tracked down online, 2 CDs each of fine jazz clarinet, and excellent chamber jazz). The most challenging part of the book, for the author and the reader is sorting through Mr. Shaw’s eight wives. It is an intriguing list, containing as it does three prominent actresses (Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Evelyn Keyes), a once-famous popular writer (Kathleen Winsor of Forever Amber) and a composer’s daughter (Betty Kern, daughter of Jerome). Also appearing are flames Betty Grable (“too coarse” says Artie), Lena Horne, and Judy Garland, who was turned down when she begged to sing in Shaw’s band (too much of a belter, says Mr. Shaw). By his own admission, Shaw was afraid of women who matched his intellectual curiosity.

But his unselfishness with a young Yvonne De Carlo (Shaw paid her salary for a month so she could quit dancing in a cheesy nightclub chorus and take some acting lessons), and his courage in hiring an unknown singer named Billie Holiday (who wasn’t allowed to sit on stage with the band when they performed in the south ) are stories not often told. Also not told is how Shaw rescued classical composer Arnold Schoenberg’s royalty payments from record company RCA Victor, (frozen with German assets following WW II) by advancing his own royalties from RCA as insurance. More typical, for both Shaw’s legend and Nolan’s style, is his description of an incident during his marriage to the 19 year old Lana Turner. It comes complete with Nolan’s love of italics for emphasis, and the use of memoir quotes to tidy up the loose ends. Art caused humiliating scenes, Lana said: demanding that she make dinner after her day at work, then in disgust throwing what she served on the carpet and saying, “Clean up that mess.” “He told me.” Jan Curran said, “he came home one day, and there Lana was with her hair needing to be done; and he said to her, her hair looked terrible.

And she said, ‘Well did you marry me for my looks ?’ And he said ‘Yes’ Well-cut her to the quick; there wasn’t anything about her he liked ’cept to look at her. That’s a mean thing to say to someone.” It made art mad when life didn’t give him what he wanted, right now . Thwarted by a door, he would bust it down. I f he forgot his keys, he broke a window. Miffed by a marriage that didn’t work, he fell back on patterns learned from a mother who complained and manipulated a father who stepped on dreams. “We lived in the little cottage of my fantasy,” Turner wrote, “but without two loving people inside it.” “I saw marriage as a long cat-fight,” Shaw admitted late in life, “because that’s how I grew up.” One might say it was Shaw who lived inside the cottage of his fantasy. After completely putting down his clarinet in the 1950’s, he drifted from writing (his The Trouble With Cinderella is a revealing look at celebrity) to movie producing with only his troubled muse to guide him.

Two sons struggled to get to know him, with intermittent success only at the very end of Shaw’s life. Despite the uncertain time sources of some of the quotes, Artie Shaw’s voice emerges from Tom Nolan’s book loudly and with engaging clarity. It’s the voice of a man who wanted more than anything to be a writer. The only published results were one mid-life memoir and two collections of short stories. The massive three volume novel he wanted to write about the education of a musician was never organized into a final work. He just lived it instead. And in reading Three Chords for Beauty, you learn how selfishness, candor, and bristling talent can seethe inside an individual for ninety four years. It is quite a journey. Who, indeed, is Artie Shaw ? ___ Brad Jones uses his retail job to fund his career as an obscure jazz saxophonist. He’s performed over 1,000 improv shows as a member of the Proposition Theatre in Inman Square and was a founding member of Boston’s Next Move Theatre.

Related: CD of the Week – Renée Fleming: Poèmes Renée Fleming sings "sensual French masterpieces" on a new album from Decca--but are the results as evocative as the billing? CD of the Week: Sounds of the 30s The amazing duo of Stefano Bollani and Riccardo Chailly return with the inter-war music of Ravel, Stravinsky, Kurt Weill, and Victor de Sabata. Book Review: A Deadly Wandering A gripping new book uses a tragedy in Utah to examine the growing menace of texting while driving The Evolution of the Clarinet in Jazz | SFJAZZ The Evolution of the Clarinet in Jazz The Evolution of the Clarinet in Jazz March 2, 2016 By Rusty Aceves Johnny Dodds Originally a German invention of the early 18th century, the clarinet has played an illustrious role in the development and history of jazz, but is an instrument that arguably had its greatest impact and visibility during the music’s New Orleans infancy and later during the Swing Era of the 30s and 40s.

Leon Roppolo with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, Sidney Bechet’s early work on clarinet and the playing of Johnny Dodds with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives bands of the mid-20s were all highly influential, and by the mid to late 1930s, clarinetists Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and Woody Herman were towering figures in the world of swing music as both instrumentalists and bandleaders. But, the end of the instrument’s relevance was seemingly in sight. Eric Dolphy The late 40s saw the explosive rise of bebop, and with the exception of a few superlative artists like Buddy DeFranco and Edmond Hall, the clarinet was largely pushed to the side in favor of its younger brass cousin, the saxophone, as the primary wind instrument of the period.

Despite Goodman and Shaw’s dalliances with bebop and Duke Ellington’s continued employment of the instrument, the clarinet was generally considered passé among the cutting edge artists of the 40s and 50s, and only slightly less-so into the 1960s, when post-bop wind genius Eric Dolphy performed regularly on bass clarinet and Jimmy Giuffre emerged as an under-appreciated innovator. Eschewing the influence of bebop, New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain made a notable impact in the early 1960s with his nouveau-Dixieland approach, but the jazz world still seemed to largely consider the instrument unfashionable. But was it? Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that use of the clarinet became more specialized as the styles and definitions of jazz began to fragment into hard bop, the avant-garde, soul jazz and myriad other sub-genres, and a continuum certainly exists upon close examination.

Anat Cohen By the 1970s, the clarinet had devotees within the avant-garde including Anthony Braxton, Alvin Batiste, and World Saxophone Quartet co-founder David Murray, who performs extensively on bass clarinet in addition to tenor saxophone. Cuba’s Paquito D’Rivera broke out as a giant of Latin Jazz during the decade, and the clarinet began to enjoy a mainstream resurgence in the hands of the jazz and classical master Eddie Daniels, swing revivalist Ken Peplowski, and later Don Byron, an artist whose talent for crossing genre boundaries made him a major critical and popular figure in the 1990s, continuing to today. Israeli-born clarinetist Anat Cohen has been a dominant force bringing the clarinet to new levels of notoriety in recent years, winning eight consecutive DownBeat Critics Polls and a Rising Star Jazz Artist of the Year nod in 2010. Baltimore’s Todd Marcus is one of the rare instrumentalists who have chosen the bass clarinet as their primary means of expression, and is easily one of this era’s defining voices on the instrument.

Jazz’s current trove of clarinet specialists has assured that the instrument is no longer a second-class woodwind, and that its future is assured for generations to come. Tags: Chapter 7: Swing Bands | Jazz: W. W. Norton StudySpace Jazz: W. W. Norton StudySpace Swing Bands Chapter Outline This chapter addresses the growth of jazz-oriented large dance orchestras, tracing the development of musical style and exploring the social and economic context for the national dance craze known as the Swing Era. We examine the changes in the music business caused by the Depression, and discuss the musical elements that went into the new swing style. We look at the economic and psychological "shift" that resulted in mass white enthusiasm for black dance-band music. Special attention is given to Benny Goodman, who exemplified these changes and brought jazz both into the popular mainstream and into a closer relationship to art music. We also encounter other swing bands, such as those of Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, Jimmie Lunceford, Cab Calloway, and Chick Webb. During the 1930s, jazz was called swing.

The features of swing include: Played by big bands made of instrumental sections of reeds, brass, and rhythm Derived from music of the 1920s Retained rhythmic contrast, bluesy phrasing, and balance between improvisation and composition Commercial Homophonic textures, bluesy riffs, clearly defined melodies, dance grooves The Depression Swing was bounded by two events. The first was the Great Depression, which started in 1929 and deepened into the 1930s. Swing, like other popular culture forms, acted as a counterstatement to the deep anxiety caused by the Depression. But swing also demanded action in the form of exuberant and partly improvised dance. Moreover, it was teenagers' music, perhaps the first of its kind. World War II This was the second major event. After four years of fighting and devoting the nation's manpower and production capabilities to the war, the country demilitarized, and as servicemen and women returned home, the dancing culture flared, and with it the economic basis for swing. During the war, swing was very popular. For many it symbolized the strengths of American democracy: it was participatory, informal, and built community.

Swing and Race African Americans, as usual, lined up to volunteer to fight. But, again as usual, the armed forces were segregated and, except for a few exceptions, African Americans were trained in segregated camps with white officers and restricted to menial labor. Racism was in the air. The Japanese were characterized as "yellow." Accordingly, black newspapers called for a "Double V" campaign-victory abroad and victory over racial prejudice at home. Swing played both sides of the race card. On the one hand it was a symbol of black culture: its dance steps were developed by black teenagers; its call-and-response, riff-based performance practices mimicked black church music; and it boosted the careers of some black bandleaders. On the other hand, whites didn't know the black origins of the music, the dance, or the language ("jive" ) that went with it; black bands had to tour the Jim Crow South; and some black musicians felt the music had been stolen from them. Swing and Economics The Depression almost destroyed the record industry, along with the availability of free music on the radio. Familiar companies went bankrupt or were bought out.

By the mid-1930s, things were beginning to look up due to the popularity of the jukebox and price reductions by a few of the surviving recording companies, Decca plus two firms owned by radio networks (Columbia by CBS; Victor by NBC). These were the three majors. Industry concentration also occurred in the radio business, Hollywood movies, and Tin Pan Alley. All of these intersected: pop music depended on radio and movies often premiered songs. Stars moved from radio to Hollywood and back. Jazz, then, was part of a popular entertainment network whose products were shared by the nation. Some saw this homogenization as a loss, similar to fascism, or at the very least demeaned through commercialism. In this context, big-band music can be thought of as pop with occasional jazz interpolations. On the other hand, commercialism made this jazz possible in that it attracted many musicians from all over, and as competition increased, so did the musical standards in terms of technical reading ability. Voices For a good example of racism during the Swing Era, read the quote by trumpeter Roy Eldridge in the text. Swing and Dance Swing was characterized by a four-beat foundation, perfect for dancing.

Although not new, it was firmly established by the early 1930s. The Savoy Swing dance came out of Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. A block long, luxurious, and charging a modest entrance fee, one could hear two bands a night there and enjoy them in a mixed ethnic and social environment. Social dancing at the Savoy was communal and intense. Thousands packed the huge dance floor, with the best dancers doing their best moves right next to the bandstand and often rehearsing in the afternoons at the Savoy. In both cases, communication between dancers and musicians on issues of tempo and groove was typical. The new dance style was called the Lindy Hop. It was more African-lower to the ground, more flexibility in the hips and knees. It also allowed for improvisation during the breakaway. As the dance grew more athletic, "air steps" started to be used. White commentators were amazed. The Rhythm Section To accommodate the new groove, the tuba made way for the string bass, which was now easily recordable with the invention of electrical recording technology. The string bass has a more percussive quality than the tuba, adding to the excitement of the music to match the Lindy Hop's energy.

And it could play a steady four-to-the-bar beat throughout an entire performance. The guitar took over from the banjo. Again, because of electrical recording technology, the raucous loud sound of the banjo was no longer necessary to cut through the sound of the band. The guitar added a more subtle and secure sound to the music. Arranging Louis Armstrong's influence led many arrangers, like Benny Carter, to create elaborate solo lines for an entire section-soli-that were harmonized in block chords, and to creatively orchestrate and harmonize their arrangements. At the same time, simpler, orally derived arrangements, or "head" arrangements, were also popular. Henderson Fletcher Henderson, the most prolific black recording artist of the day, used both written and head arrangements. He had a stable of very good arrangers-his brother Horace, Carter, and Redman-but most of his hits were head arrangements of older tunes such as "Sugar Foot Stomp" ( derived from "Dippermouth Blues" ) and Jelly Roll Morton's "King Porter Stomp." Eventually, after he started to arrange for the band, Henderson notated these arrangements. His arranging style was characterized by short, memorable riffs typically in call-and-response fashion.

He often transformed the melody into short burst of notes. He left lots of room for solos, for which he wrote either held-chord or riffs backgrounds. His arrangements also featured driving, riff-based climactic choruses. "Blue Lou" Earlier recordings of the Henderson band never lived up to their live performances. But by 1936, when this was recorded, they were a much better recording ensemble. This piece was written by saxophonist Edgar Sampson and arranged by Horace Henderson. It oriented toward soloists Roy Eldridge on trumpet and saxophonist Chu Berry, who use the simple, two-note figure of opening melody to good effect in their respective solos. The recording starts in a relaxed, two-beat rhythm but the four-four swing rhythm eventually takes over. The first chorus introduces the melody, which is deformed by the last chorus. It modulates to another key near the end, perhaps reflecting the need to be flexible in performing for dancers. Breakthrough Through the 1930s, the music industry was divided by race.

Although there were exceptions, musicians, venues, and audiences followed this pattern either by segregating the venue on a particular night or reserving performances for either blacks or whites, although black bands could play for white audiences and vice versa. Economically, segregation worked in favor of whites. The highest-paying venues usually hired white bands, and Jim Crow laws in the South kept black bands on their toes. Because of racial stereotyping, black bands specialized in "hot" dance music. But they also had to be versatile in order to survive. They had to be great readers, able to perform all kinds of danced styles. The major black bands, such as Duke Ellington's and Cab Calloway's, were able to remain viable during the Depression. There is a long history of white musicians listening carefully to black musicians and thereby learning how to play jazz. Many white musicians learned how to play "legit" and then copied whatever jazz they could find. But playing jazz made them outsiders to the community. Their "day gig" was generally to play in commercial ensembles like radio orchestras so that they could play jazz at night. This all changed with Benny Goodman.

Benny Goodman (1909-1986) Goodman grew up very poor in Chicago but found he could escape a life of menial labor through music. He studied with Chicago Symphony clarinetist Franz Schoep while listening to Chicago jazz. He modeled his playing on both white (Leon Rappolo) and black (Jimmie Noone) players. By the 1920s he had played with Ben Pollack's band as a good player leaning toward jazz. Goodman wanted to lead a band that bridged jazz and the commercial world of music. Mildred Bailey suggested he hire some black arrangers, many of whom were out of work due to the Depression. He hired some of the best: Benny Carter, Edgar Sampson, and Fletcher Henderson. In 1935 the band was featured as the "hot" orchestra on the radio program Let's Dance. They went on a national tour that summer to a dismal response until they played the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, where they were an immediate hit, probably due to the fact that their late-night radio broadcasts were aired at prime time in California. White teenagers launched the Swing Era. The band applied jazz arrangements to current pop songs.

Arrangements usually started with a clear rendition of the melody, but in later choruses the tune turned into swing. Goodman was viewed as someone who could take black music and use it in such a way that whites could dance to this liberating and exciting sound. Goodman brought dance music into the mainstream. "Sweet" bands were considered corny. But Goodman could play both "hot" and "sweet," and he programmed his music to match the tastes of a broad audience. His band played a successful concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938, cementing their respectability. Teenagers adopted black dance ("jitterbugs") and slang ("jive"). They lined up for concerts and danced in the aisles. This shocked their parents (as it was probably meant to do). Goodman could satisfy jitterbugs while at the same time make jazz acceptable. Small-Group Swing Goodman launched a number of small groups that emphasized the soloist, renewing an interest in improvisation. Some of them were interracial. Goodman met pianist Teddy Wilson (1912-1986) on his way back to Chicago from California. He jammed with Wilson and was impressed with his polished, inventive improvisations.

He was also dismayed by the possibility of forming a mixed-race trio with his white drummer, Gene Krupa, and African American Wilson. The trio recording sold well so, rather than putting Wilson in the big band, Goodman brought him on as a special guest. This "band-within-a-band" concept soon caught on with other bandleaders. In 1936, Goodman added vibraphonist Lionel Hampton (1908-2002) to form a quartet. Hampton saw himself as an entertainer as well as a musician. He later formed his own band and took part in early R and B. The extraverted Hampton and Krupa contrasted with the shy Goodman and Wilson. "Dinah" A thirty-two-bar, AABA pop song composed in 1925, it became a standard. It has the feeling of a jam session about it. Goodman starts by playing the melody but then plays a busy bridge. Hampton uses riff figures and complicated harmonic substitutions. Krupa starts interacting rhythmically while Goodman improvises. Wilson adds a brief solo. By the end, the three are playing polyphonically. Other recordings show them ending on riffs.

This is a very polished style with no mistakes and a very relaxed feeling. John Hammond (1919-1987) and Other Jazz Enthusiasts Hammond was a longtime music entrepreneur and activist. He was important in many musical careers and styles, including boogie-woogie, Kansas City jazz, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. He was born into a wealthy New York family. He was attracted to the black music of Harlem from an early age. After graduating from Yale, he became a jazz reporter, and eventually, a record producer. His two passions were a hatred of racial injustice and a love of black folk music and jazz. Because of the first passion, he was involved in left-wing causes. The second passion led him to believe that black music was better than white music. At first Hammond's two interests did not fit together, but in response to the rise of fascism, a broad coalition of left-wing forces was formed. Known as the Popular Front, its members viewed folk music as the voice of the common man (previously, the Communist Party saw jazz as a product of capitalism). As a leftist, Hammond was unusual.

He decided to work within the capitalist system. He joined Columbia Records and scouted out new talent, which, one way or another, he recorded.. However, some black musicians, such as Ellington, resented his aristocratic insistence. Early Jazz Fans Hammond was one jazz enthusiast among many. A growing legion of jazz record collectors started searching for old recordings. This led to the first jazz reissues, which preserved the jazz of the 1920s. Some collectors noted the discographical details of each recording they found. This led to the beginnings of jazz discography, the science of jazz record classification. They also formed "Hot Clubs" in the towns across the United States. New magazines such as Downbeat and Metronome were formed to meet the reading needs of these fans. Fans applauded the mainstream acceptance of jazz but were wary of "commercialism," even though it was the commercial success of jazz that fostered the "anticommercialism" of the fans. Major Swing Bands As the dance business boomed, so did the proliferation of dance bands, often from within the ranks of established ensembles such as Benny Goodman's.

Artie Shaw (1920-2004) Shaw was Goodman's chief rival, having come from the same kind of background, studied clarinet, and learned from the great African American musicians of Chicago. He also listened to European composers such as Stravinsky and Debussy. He led a double life: one as a jazz musician playing with Harlem musicians such as Willie "The Lion" Smith, and one as a member of the CBS staff orchestra playing commercial music. Never expecting to make much out of his music, he nevertheless had a huge hit in 1938 with "Begin the Beguine." He became a major celebrity, which he felt got in the way of the music. He particularly detested jitterbugs. He dissolved his band several time before retiring from music in 1954. "Star Dust" Shaw was a skilled improviser. He sometimes played raucous music, but at other times, he played music that tried to bridge the jazz and classical worlds. In 1936 he wrote a piece for clarinet and string quartet and in 1940 he added a nine-piece string section to his band, which was well used by arranger Lennie Hayton.

"Star Dust" comes from this period and provides a new sound for a swing band. It focuses on the melody rather than the dance-evoking, riff-based arrangements of many bands from that period. All of the solos are restrained. Jimmie Lunceford (1902-1947) Lunceford did not fit the bandleader mold: he was not a star performer; although he learned to play a number of instruments, he did not play in the band; and he was university educated and a high school music teacher before he started the band. Like many African American educators, he saw music as a means of social and economic uplift. He organized his students into this first band, the Chickasaw Syncopators. He augmented his band with friends from Fisk University. The band got its first big break in 1934, when they were asked to play at the Cotton club. They recorded for Decca Records and toured the United States. Lunceford was a strict disciplinarian in terms of music, appearance, and behavior. While putting on a show, the performers played hard-driving swing music as well as humorous novelties. A black band such as Lunceford's had to tour continually.

By 1942, many of the musicians had had enough and the best soloists quit. "Annie Laurie" This piece was arranged by one of Lunceford's top arrangers, Sy Oliver, a trumpeter who joined the band in 1933. This piece is far from a typical swing tune. Originally a nineteenth-century tune that became a favorite of Scottish soldiers by the mid-nineteenth century, Oliver turns it into a lively swing tune, recorded live here. Glen Miller (1904-1944) Probably the most popular band leader of the 1940s, Miller had no intentions of forming a jazz band. He aimed for the white American middle class. Born in the Midwest, he developed a liking for jazzy dance music. During the 1920s, he was both an arranger and a soloist, working at various times with Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, and Ray Noble. In 1938 he started his own band, which played clear melodies in a smooth, danceable rhythm with a distinctive sound. He created this sound by combining the saxophone section with a clarinet. He also added vocals to some of his arrangements.

This combination resulted in a great number of hits during the 1940s. Miller also worked with the armed services. His 1942 Glen Miller Army Air Force Band, a large ensemble that included strings and brass, featured an eclectic mixture of music. In 1944 Miller disappeared over the English Channel. Cab Calloway (1907-1944) To whites, Calloway represented an entrÃ©e into African American cultural life; to blacks he represented the hope that a man with talent and ambition could rise to the top. He grew up in Baltimore. He studied classical singing but sang jazz at night. In the 1920s he met Armstrong, from whom he learned about scat singing. His band, the Alabamians, played New York's Savoy Ballroom but were viewed as corny. In 1930, he took over a swinging band from Kansas City, the Missourians. It was this band that was asked to replace Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club. Here, he joined up with songwriter Harold Arlen and lyricist Ted Koehler to create a number of pieces that depicted imaginary Harlem scenes.

Calloway's exuberant personality and scat singing added excitement to the songs. He was a very good singer with a broad range. He was also a good businessman, hiring the best musicians he could find. His band toured the South, evoking often-hostile reactions to their New York hipness. But at least they traveled in style, on their own Pullman car. By the 1930s Calloway started to focus on jazz. He hired the best jazz musicians, including a young Dizzy Gillespie. The quality of the music, including some of Gillespie's first arrangements, was always high and there were plentiful opportunities to solo. Calloway also played the role of Sportin' Life in the 1950 production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Finally, he appeared in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. Riverwalk Jazz - Stanford University Libraries STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES Reluctant Genius of Jazz: Artie Shaw Artie Shaw. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Artie Shaw was one of the top-grossing stars of the 1930s and the only serious rival Benny Goodman had to his title as “The King of Swing." To celebrate the Shaw legacy, Riverwalk's David Holt talks with Tom Nolan, the author of a new biography, Three Chords for Beauty's Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw. Nolan drew on extended interviews he conducted with Shaw in his home between 1990 and 2004. Three Chords for Beauty's Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw, by Tom Nolan. Courtesy W.W. Norton & Co. Also on our broadcast salute to Artie Shaw, clips from Terry Gross' 1985 interview. Shaw talks about being a white man trying to play jazz in New York in the 1920s, his passion for music and his lifelong competition with Benny Goodman.

The title of Tom Nolan's new biography refers to a poem that Shaw quoted throughout his life: "I played three chords for beauty's sake and one to pay the rent." Nolan explains that Shaw saw this proportion as a fair bargain to make with the competing demands of art and commerce in his life, "but when it began to tip out of balance he’d take a break for a while, he’d go away for a few weeks, months or even years." As a teen-aged freelance musician in New York in the 1920s Artie Shaw had a front-row seat for the unfolding of jazz history. He personally knew and admired Bix Beiderbecke and even roomed with him briefly. He was among an elite group of young, white "session men" in New York who found employment (even during the Depression years) in hotel ballroom dance bands, on popular radio shows and in recording studios. Among his colleagues were Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Glen Miller—all of whom went on to lead major swing bands. Shaw with Billie Holiday, 1938 Boston's Roseland-State Ballroom. Courtesy Bob Inman.

In the early 1930s Shaw came under the mentorship of Harlem Stride pianist Willie 'The Lion' Smith. Early in both their careers Shaw developed a friendship with Billie Holiday. Later he hired her to sing with the Artie Shaw Orchestra, and she became the first black vocalist to work full-time in an all-white band. Racial pressures proved to be too much to bear however, and Billie left the band shortly thereafter. Following the example of Paul Whiteman before him, Artie Shaw's first band featured a mixture of strings and winds, creating an innovative blend of jazz and classical elements. But Shaw's first hit record, "Begin the Beguine," was recorded with more conventional swing-band instrumentation with "killer-diller," 'hot' arrangements that became a hallmark of his work. As young musicians in New York, Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman found themselves working side by side in the same orchestras, often competing for the same jobs. This competition only increased as the two clarinetists evolved into Swing Era stars.

Question: What instrument was played by bandleaders Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw?
Answer: Clarinet