To round out my collection of historical jazz clarinets, I've long needed a Selmer Albert, the clarinet of choice for the famed second generation of New Orleans jazz clarinetists - Sidney Bechet, Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Omer Simeon, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, and others. Sometimes referred to as "Simple" System, the Albert differs from Boehm System clarinets not only in key arrangements and fingering, but in bore and timbre.
Opinions differ as to how great a degree the Albert contrasts with the Boehm, and whether one can achieve the same timbres on either. Albert Nicholas, for example, switched mid-career for the technical facility offered by the Boehm system, claiming there was no real difference in the sound. Many others disagree, using all sorts of adjectives to describe what can or can't be replicated on a Boehm.
My own opinion is that they are very different instruments. The upper clarion and altissimo on this Selmer Albert open to a much wider, sheet like sound that can be heard on recordings by Jimmie Noone and Sidney Bechet. Among other tonal aspects of the horn, I don't think I could ever fully replicate that timbre on any of my various Boehm system clarinets.
The clarinet reviewed here was another acquisition from the Benade Collection, and from exterior evidence and the name stamp Arthur Benade put on it, suggests a good deal of acoustic fine tuning was done by the master himself.
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| 1927 Selmer Albert System Clarinet fine tuned by Arthur Benade Eric Seddon Collection Marlboro Man Music |
Readers of this blog will know that I hold the late Arthur Benade's contributions to our understanding of wind instruments in very high regard, and that I'm hopeful clarinet makers will study his clarinets and incorporate his advances into their own models - most specifically learning from the instruments in my collection reviewed earlier this year. That pair of clarinets was unique, so far as I could tell, in the Benade collection, in that he had essentially used Selmer clarinets as blanks, altering them to such a degree that he erased the Selmer logos on them and inscribed his own name and the date he considered them to have been completed.
This Selmer Albert System clarinet clearly wasn't altered to the same degree - the logos and serial number have been left intact.
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| 1927 Selmer Albert System Bell fine tuned by Arthur Benade Eric Seddon Collection/Marlboro Man Music |
And yet, just below the old Selmer "Lyre" Logo (prior to Selmer's famous "laurel" logo that dominated most of the 20th century) we see the stamp "A. H. Benade." To me, this indicates that Benade did enough fine tuning to warrant putting his name on the work - and perhaps that he was satisfied enough with his results that he wanted it to bear his name.
It may seem a niggling point, but I think it's important, when we are talking about historically informed performances - I don't consider the Benade Pair in my collection to be "Selmers" - they were originally Selmers, but were transformed into Benade's ideal clarinets. Contrastingly, this is indeed a Selmer Albert clarinet - it responds and sounds like one. Hence my labeling it as being fine tuned by Arthur Benade.
Some more photos:
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| 1927 Selmer Albert System Clarinet (detail) fine tuned by Arthur Benade Eric Seddon Collection/Marlboro Man Music |
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| 1927 Selmer Albert System Clarinet (detail) fine tuned by Arthur Benade Eric Seddon Collection/Marlboro Man Music |
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| 1927 Selmer Albert System Clarinet fine tuned by Arthur Benade Eric Seddon Collection/Marlboro Man Music |
