Artie Shaw

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Artie Shaw (May 23, 1910, New York, New York – December 30, 2004, Thousand Oaks, California) was an accomplished American jazz clarinetist, composer, bandleader and author of both fiction and non-fiction.

Born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky in New York City, Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism according to Shaw's autobiography. Shaw began learning the saxophone when he was 13 years old, and by the age of 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band. Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 until 1936, Shaw performed with a variety of bands and orchestras, including those of Johnny Caverello and Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930 as played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music which he would later incorporate into his arrangements.

Shaw first gained critical acclaim with his "Interlude in B-flat" at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York in 1935. During the Swing Era, Shaw's big band was popular with hits like "Begin the Beguine" (1938), "Stardust" (with a legendary trombone solo by Jack Jenney), "Back Bay Shuffle", "Moonglow", "Rosalie", "Frenesi" and "Summit Ridge Drive". He was an innovator in the big band idiom, using unusual instrumentation; "Interlude in B-flat", where he was backed with only a rhythm section and a string quartet, was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed third stream.

In addition to hiring Buddy Rich, he signed Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist in 1938, becoming the first white bandleader to hire a full-time black female singer. However, after recording "Any Old Times" she left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South, as well as from music company executives who wanted a more mainstream singer. His band became enormously successful, and his playing was eventually recognized as equal to that of Benny Goodman: Longtime Duke Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard cited Shaw as his favorite clarinet player. In response to Goodman's nickname, the "King of Swing," Shaw's fans dubbed him the "King of the Clarinet." Shaw, however, felt the titles were reversed. "Benny Goodman played clarinet. I played music," he said.

Shaw did in fact prize innovation and exploration in music more highly than popular success and formulaic dance music, despite a string of hits which sold more than 100 million records. He fused jazz with classical music by adding strings to his arrangements, experiment with bebop, and form "chamber jazz" groups which utilized such novel sounds as harpsichords or Afro-Cuban music.

The long series of musical groups Shaw formed included such talents as Helen Forrest, Mel Tormé, Ray Conniff, Buddy Rich, Dave Tough, Barney Kessel and Tal Farlow. He chose the bluesy "Nightmare" for his personal theme, rather than more approachable songs. He openly insulted the fans who continually demanded he play his old standards as "morons" and executives in the music business as "thieves."

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[edit] Pacific overtures

During World War II, Shaw and his entire band enlisted in the U.S. Navy. They served in the Pacific theater (similar to Glenn Miller's wartime band in Europe). After 18 months playing for Navy personnel (sometimes as many as four concerts a day in battle zones, including Guadalcanal), Shaw returned to the U.S. in a state of physical exhaustion, receiving a medical discharge. In the late 1940s, Shaw performed classical music at Carnegie Hall and with the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein.

Like Benny Goodman and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a small group from within the band. He named it the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange. The quintet's sound was set apart by band pianist Johnny Guarneri playing a harpsichord on the quintet recordings and Al Hendrickson playing an electric guitar. In time, the quintet would prove another of Shaw's breaking of racial boundaries, when trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield. The Gramercy Five's biggest hit was "Summit Ridge Drive" (Shaw's California address at the time). A CD of The Complete Gramercy Five sessions was released in 1990.

In 1954, Shaw stopped playing the clarinet, citing his own perfectionism, which, he later said, would have killed him. He explained to a reporter, "In the world we live in, compulsive perfectionists finish last. You have to be Lawrence Welk, or, on another level, Irving Berlin, and write the same kind of music over and over again. I'm not able to do that." He spent the rest of the 1950s living in Europe.

In 1981, he organised a new Artie Shaw Band with clarinetist Dick Johnson as bandleader and soloist. Shaw himself would guest conduct from time to time, ending his self-imposed retirement. After Canadian filmmaker Brigitte Berman interviewed Shaw, Hoagy Carmichael, Doc Cheatham and others for her documentary film Bix: Ain't None of Them Play LIke Him Yet (1981) about Bix Beiderbecke, she went on to create an Academy Award-winning documentary, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (1985), featuring her interviews with Shaw, Buddy Rich, Mel Tormé, Helen Forrest and others.

In 1991, Artie Shaw's band library and manuscript collection was donated to the University of Arizona. In 2004, he was presented with a lifetime achievement Grammy Award.

[edit] Personal life

A self-proclaimed "very difficult man," Shaw was married eight times: Jane Cairns (1932); Margaret Allen (1934-37); Lana Turner (1940); Betty Kern (1941-43), daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern; Ava Gardner (1945-46); Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor (1946-48); Doris Dowling (1952-56) and Evelyn Keyes (1957-85). He had two sons by Kern and Dowling. He often disparaged his wives publicly; when asked why he never saw his children, he replied, "I didn't get along with the mothers, so why should I get along with the kids?" It became a national joke to have been "married as many times as Artie Shaw."

In 1946, Shaw was present at a meeting of the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Olivia de Haviland and Ronald Reagan, part of a core group of actors and artists who were trying to sway the organization away from communism, presented an anti-communist declaration which, if signed, was to run in newspapers. There was bedlam as many rose to champion the communist cause, and Artie Shaw began praising the democratic standards of the Soviet constitution. [1] In 1953, Shaw was brought up before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his leftist activities. The committee was investigating a peace activist organization, the World Peace Congress, which it considered a communist front.

He was a precision marksman, ranking fourth in the United States in 1962, as well as an expert fly fisherman. In his later years, Shaw lived and wrote in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, California. Shaw had long suffered from adult onset diabetes and finally died of complications of the disease at age 94. In 2005, Shaw's eighth wife, Evelyn Keyes, sued Shaw's estate, claiming that she was entitled to one-half of Shaw's estate pursuant to a contract to make a will between them. In July 2006, a Ventura, California jury unanimously held that Keyes was entitled to almost one-half of Shaw's estate, or $1,420,000.

[edit] Radio rhythms

Artie Shaw in 1940
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Artie Shaw in 1940

Shaw did many band remotes, and he was often heard from the Blue Room of New York's Hotel Lincoln. It was the location of his only regular radio series as headliner. Sponsored by Old Gold cigarettes, Shaw broadcast on CBS from November 20, 1938 until November 14, 1939.

At the height of his popularity, Shaw reportedly earned US $60,000 per week, a large amount during the Great Depression. For a comparison, George Burns and Gracie Allen, were each making US $5,000 per week during the year (1940-41) the Artie Shaw Orchestra provided the music for their radio show. He also acted on the show as a love interest for Gracie Allen and the sarcastic bandleader who had trouble with South American guitarist Señor Lee, who could not fully grasp English.

[edit] Films and fiction

Shaw made several musical shorts in 1939, and he portrayed himself in the Fred Astaire film Second Chorus (1940), which featured Shaw and his orchestra playing "Concerto For Clarinet." The film brought him two Oscar nominations, for Best Score and Best Song ("Love of My Life"). He collaborated on the song "If It's You" for the Marx Brothers' film, The Big Store (1941).

Throughout his musical career, Shaw would take sabbaticals where he would quit the business. He credited his time in the Navy as a period of renewed introspection. He entered psychoanalysis and began to pursue a writing career. His autobiography, The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity was published in 1952 (with later reprint editions in 1992 and 2001). Revealing downbeat elements of the music business, Shaw explained that "the trouble with Cinderella" is "nobody ever lives happily ever after." He turned to semi-autobiographical fiction with the three short novels in I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! (1965, reprinted in 1997), which prompted Terry Southern's comment: "Here is a deeply probing examination of the American marital scene. I flipped over it!" Shaw's short stories, including "Snow White in Harlem," were collected in The Best of Intentions and Other Stories (1989). He worked for years on his autobiographical novel The Education of Albie Snow, but it remains unpublished.

Currently, through Curtis International Associates, the Artie Shaw Orchestra is still active.

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