Artie Shaw - clarinet
Les Robinson, Hank Freeman - alto sax
Tony Pastor, Ronnie Perry, Georgie Auld - tenor sax
Johnny Best, Bernie Previn, Chuck Peterson, Harry Geller - trumpets
George Arus, Russell Brown, Harry Rodgers, Les Jenkins - trombones
Les Burness, Bob Kitsis - piano
Al Avola, Dave Barbour - guitar
Sid Weiss - bass
Cliff Leeman, George Wettling, Buddy Rich - drums
Helen Forrest, Tony Pastor - vocals
After more than a decade of writing this blog, I'm shocked to find I haven't reviewed this CD box. Maybe I took for granted that it was inevitable, or thought it would be too difficult to find enough superlatives, or maybe I thought I'd already done it. However I've managed to maintain this level of neglect, it's mind boggling.
Of all the great jazz clarinetists, Artie Shaw resonates more personally with me than any other. We share a geographical connection with roots in New York, Connecticut, and Cleveland; an intellectual similarity that makes the world of literature and writing as enticing as music; a fundamental need to wrestle with the meaning of existence; and a musical preference, above all, for what might be termed lyric melody of meaning. That this box might contain what I consider his most important and beautiful recordings may have been why I've neglected to review it. The fact is, despite what one might think, I've tried to stay away from drawing too much attention to his music - not out of some Bloomian "Anxiety of Influence", but simply because I'm never sure I can do it justice.
You see, I've given historical "lecture concerts" in nightclubs and libraries highlighting the accomplishments of many of the great clarinetists of jazz history. Sidney Bechet, Jimmie Noone, Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain, Hubert Rostaing, George Lewis, and Acker Bilk all come to mind - I've prepared lectures on their life's work and performed tunes in context for them. But never for Artie. It's probably because he's just too close to me - I almost don't know where to start. It's too personal. I can honestly say I've been influenced by just about everyone I've listened to by this point, but Artie is really the bedrock of my style. Here are a couple of quick stories demonstrating how this influence reveals itself:
Once, while playing at a jam session at a local tavern, I remember an older gentlemen coming up to me between sets, with a puzzled look on his face.
"It's been bothering me all evening...who you remind me of..." he said, with that odd familiarity with which perfect strangers approach jazz musicians after a set. "Then it came to me! Your playing reminds me of Gustav Mahler!" And he pointed at me knowingly, shaking his finger with a sly smile, as though he'd caught me throwing Mahler excerpts into my solos.
Another time, while recording my live album at the Bop Stop in Cleveland, also between sets, a very astute trumpet player in the audience commented that he felt my performance of "Go Down, Moses" was a seamless fusion of klezmer and blues. The truth is that neither the similarity to Mahler, nor the fusion was conscious - but the both spoke of the foundational influence of Artie Shaw on my playing. His musical thoughts have worked their way into my language, because they've always been the basis for my musical speech, as it were.
So maybe this explains why I've taken so long to review these recordings. I think this box might represent the finest documents of Artie Shaw's playing and musical mind. And because of that, for me at least, they might be the greatest performances of what is known as the Swing Era, by any band. They document an important period for Shaw - from just before "Begin the Beguine" catapulted him to nationally recognized fame (and fortune), to his second (but thankfully not final) retirement. These recordings follow him from what he described as the "rat trap" that was the Blue Room at New York City's Lincoln Hotel in the Fall of 1938, through his stay at the Summer Terrace of Ritz Carlton in Boston during the Summer of 1939, to the glamour of the Cafe Rouge at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, where Shaw snapped at last and, in an effort to preserve his sanity and health, abruptly walked off the stage in the middle of a performance, never to return with this group again. It seemed a career ending move at the time. Fortunately for the rest of us, it wasn't, but even if it had been we'd have no cause to complain, as Shaw and this band left us some of the finest music of jazz history. This box is even more important than the great studio recordings made by the Artie Shaw Orchestra at the time, because it's live.
With very rare exception, I always prefer live recordings, even with all their flaws. Whether we're talking about Benny Goodman's Madhattan Room Broadcasts, Duke Ellington's All Star Road Band, or classical recordings like Gennady Rozhdestvensky's live cycle of the Vaughan Williams symphonies, there is an immediacy and an interactive excitement that cannot be replicated without an audience. As a performer, both in the classical and jazz realms, I can attest to being more creative and alive on stage than in any rehearsal or studio session. Audiences draw things out of performers that can't be imitated. These recordings are no exception - they are almost all more interesting and exciting than their studio counterparts. Shaw himself was interviewed and served as a consultant for this set, and the booklet provides almost track by track observations from the great clarinetist.
Unlike Benny Goodman's Madhattan Room Broadcasts, which were re-released in a six CD box in the 1990s, the tracks from these three discs are not released in strict chronological order, but chosen from the three broadcast locations in New York and Boston, to create three re-imagined "sets." Pete Kline seems to have made the choices for these sets (he's credited as the Box Set producer and compiler). He did an excellent job - the listener might be forgiven for thinking these were three complete performances from three evenings. It also speaks the amazing consistency of Shaw's band over the course of more than a year. The performances from Boston aren't notably different from the ones in New York, either before or after the groups Cinderella success. If you'd told me they were all from the same location, from the same weekend, I'd believe you.
Most of the arrangements for these charts were done by Artie Shaw, Jerry Gray, and the guitarist for the band Al Avola. They represent the epitome of Shaw's style - lyrical melody, clear dialogue and counterpoint between the sections - nothing pedantic muddying up matters; they're a study of beauty without sentimentality. And slotted throughout the arrangements, some of the finest jazz soloing ever captured.
Leading off with "Rose Room" from the Ritz-Carlton on August 19, 1939, we hear Artie's lyrical virtuosity at work. I don't know if anyone possessed a melodic gift to the degree he did at this point in his career. In many ways he reminds me of a jazz version of Tchaikovsky. His rhythmic variety alone during his solos, combined with an ability to craft the most intricate melodic ideas all within the space of a chorus (or at times half a chorus) remains, for me, unmatched. When jazz embraced bebop language, it lost some of this lyricism, in my opinion. I've always felt it would be worthwhile to use Artie's lyricism as a starting point, and develop jazz in a different direction - less modernist, more romantic. It's actually what I try to do myself as a player. Anyhow, we hear Artie at zenith here. his solos on "Rose Room", "Carioca", "Yesterdays", "Sweet Adeline", "One Foot in the Groove", "Man from Mars", "Stardust", "Out of Nowhere", "St Louis Blues", "It Had to be You", "I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "I Cover the Waterfront" and more are classics. For any musician they are a clinic of creativity, beauty, and invention. I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that he wasn't just soloing here, but leading the band as well - and the band is in incredible form - relaxed, warm, swinging - a type of perfection rarely accomplished by any ensemble of any musical genre.
(For those wanting a sample, the recording of "The Carioca" here cannot be surpassed. From a teenage Buddy Rich chirping in the background, to Artie's endless variations - including his stellar choruses over the band at the end, it's a must for any jazz collection).
There is plenty of great soloing by other members of the band in this set, but the star is Shaw. Helen Forrest, my favorite of the girl singers back then, is in top form on these recordings too. Her intelligent, heart rending versions of "Comes Love", "Don't Worry 'Bout Me", and "Two Sleepy People" in particular remain my favorite versions of these tunes by a singer. Tony Pastor, though he was admittedly a bit of a novelty singer in addition to being a solid tenor sax, is in good form here too - adding humor, and even a little pathos to the fine arrangements he sang over.
When Artie left the bandstand in November of 1939, leaving this band and seemingly his career as a musician behind, it was widely believed that he did it out disgust for the music business and its hassles, along with the wildness of the teenage fans who annoyed him with their antics. But listening to these recordings, once again, this morning, I can't help but wonder if he psychologically needed a break from the intense creating he was doing on a nightly basis. I'm not sure many musicians have sustained such lyrical invention and technical brilliance over the course of a twelve month span as we have documented here. And to do it while leading one of the finest ensembles in the world - it's beyond what I can fathom.
As I wrote above, if he had never returned to music, we would have no reason to be anything but grateful. Fortunately for us, he added more brilliant chapters to his career and to jazz history. As great as those were, however, none surpassed the perfection he achieved in the year spanning from November 1938 to November 1939.
***
Epilogue: I bought this box, of all places, at Tower Records in New Orleans in 1999. I wasn't aware of its existence until seeing it there, and immediately appreciated the irony of going all the way to New Orleans just to end up buying Artie Shaw discs. It was on the return to Indiana (where I lived as a grad student) that the importance of the purchase became apparent. Driving all through the night from New Orleans to Bloomington, through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky, my wife and I played these discs over and over. They were a match for the heartland landscape at night, perfectly engaging, managing to keep me awake and in a type of elated awe for hundreds of miles. I'll never forget the experience. My admiration for these recordings hasn't flagged in the twenty four years since.
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