Artie Shaw
Artie Shaw was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, and author of both fiction and non-fiction.
Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of the United States' most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine". Before the release of "Beguine", Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and, after its release, he became a major pop artist in short order. The record eventually became one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music, which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions. His music influenced other musicians, such as Monty Norman in England, whose "James Bond Theme" features a vamp possibly influenced by Shaw's 1938 recording of "Nightmare".
Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within the ranks of the big bands he led. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944, during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific. Following his discharge in 1944, he returned to lead a band through 1945. Following the breakup of that band, he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity, although he remained a force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954.
Early life
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was born on May 23, 1910, in New York City to Sarah and Harold "Harry" Arshawsky, a dressmaker and photographer. The family was Jewish; his father was from Russia, his mother from Austria.Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. He bought a saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13. At 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band.
Career
Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 to 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras; from 1926 to 1929, he worked in Cleveland and established a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by the violinist Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930, he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements. In 1932, Shaw joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with the outfit including "It Don't Mean a Thing " and "Fit as a Fiddle".Leader of bands
In 1935, he first gained attention with his "Interlude in B-flat" at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York. During the swing era, his big bands were popular with hits like "Begin the Beguine", "Stardust", "Back Bay Shuffle", "Moonglow", "Rosalie", and "Frenesi". The show was well received, but was forced to dissolve in 1937 because his band's sound was not commercial. Shaw valued experimental and innovative music over dancing and love songs.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. His incorporation of stringed instruments could be attributed to the influence of the classical composer Igor Stravinsky.
In addition to hiring Buddy Rich, he signed Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist in 1938, becoming the first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated Southern U.S. However, after recording "Any Old Time", Holiday left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South, as well as from music company executives who wanted a more "mainstream" singer.
Like his main rival, Benny Goodman, and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a smaller "band within the band" in 1940. He named it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange. Band pianist Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord on the quintet recordings, and Al Hendrickson played electric guitar. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield. In 1940, the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides, then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941. The Gramercy Five's biggest hit was "Summit Ridge Drive", one of Shaw's million-selling records. His last prewar band, organized in September 1941, included Oran "Hot Lips" Page, Max Kaminsky, Georgie Auld, Dave Tough, Jack Jenney, Ray Conniff and Guarnieri.
The long series of musical groups Shaw subsequently formed included Lena Horne, Helen Forrest, Mel Tormé, Buddy Rich, Dave Tough, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Dodo Marmarosa, and Ray Conniff. He used the morose "Nightmare", with its Hasidic nuances, as his theme rather than choosing a more accessible song. In a televised interview in the 1970s, Shaw derided the "asinine" songs of Tin Pan Alley that were the lifeblood of popular music and which bands, especially the most popular were compelled to play night after night. In 1994, he told Frank Prial of The New York Times: "I thought that because I was Artie Shaw I could do what I wanted, but all they wanted was 'Begin the Beguine'".
Throughout his career, Shaw had a habit of forming bands, developing them according to his immediate aspirations, making a quick series of records, and then disbanding. He generally did not stick around long enough to reap his bands' successes through live performances of their recorded hits. Following the breakup of what was already his second band in 1939, he rarely toured at all and, if he did, his personal appearances were usually limited to long-term engagements in a single venue or bookings that did not require much traveling, unlike many bands of the era that traveled great distances doing seemingly endless strings of one-night engagements.
Radio days
Shaw did many big band remote broadcasts. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1938, he was often heard from the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City. After touring in 1939, he led the house band at the Café Rouge of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. He was the headliner of a radio series with comedian Robert Benchley as emcee. Shaw broadcast on CBS from November 20, 1938, until November 14, 1939.Shaw became increasingly disillusioned with not having time to develop new arrangements, and having to play the same pop tunes over and over. In an interview, he explained, "'Begin the Beguine' is a pretty nice tune. But not when you have to play it 500 nights in a row." Finally, in frustration, he walked off the Café Rouge bandstand while on the air, and quit the band two days later. He departed for Mexico, and the band continued without him into January but eventually broke up.
After Shaw returned from Mexico in 1940, and still under contract to RCA Victor, he experimented with a group of session musicians in Hollywood, trying to combine strings and woodwinds with a jazz band. The result was the hit "Frenesi".
He was hired as bandleader for the Burns and Allen Show broadcast from Hollywood. He organized a band that was modeled after his swing band concept of the late-1930s with the addition of six violins, two violas, and one cello. The addition of a string section to a big band was not novel, as it had been done by Paul Whiteman and others since the 1920s. Shaw updated the idea with the music trends of the 1940s. Strings gave him a wider tonal palette and allowed him to concentrate on ballads rather than the fast dance songs of the swing era. Shaw was at or near the top of the list of virtuoso jazz bandleaders. The band was showcased on the Burns and Allen program every week.
In 1940, at the height of his popularity, the 30-year-old Shaw earned up to $60,000 per week. In contrast, George Burns and Gracie Allen were each making $5,000 per week during the year that Shaw and his orchestra provided the music for their radio show. He acted on the show as a love interest for Gracie Allen. Shaw's contract was renewed for another 13 weeks when the program was moved to New York.
Shaw disliked having to be a part of the celebrity culture of the period, with its professional obligations. He told Metronome magazine: "I don't like the business of music. I'm unhappy in the music 'business.' Maybe I don't even belong in it. I like the music part, but for me the business part just plain stinks." Shaw also resented the constant pressure imposed on him by networks, agencies, publishers, and promoters. He summed up his feelings in a self-penned 1939 Saturday Evening Post article: "My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm a longhair, impressed with my own ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My faith in dance music — I refuse to call it swing — borders on the fanatic. I have the utmost respect for the many real musicians who are creating a new music as important as the classics, but I have no respect for musical clowns who lead an orchestra with a baton and a quip. However, more power to them if they can make it pay."
When Shaw told his agents that he was walking away from the big band, they warned him that he couldn't do that; he had a million dollars in contracts that had to be honored. Shaw didn't care, and responded, "Tell 'em I'm insane. A nice, young American boy walking away from a million dollars, wouldn't you call that insane?"
Shaw broke up the Hollywood band, keeping a nucleus of seven musicians in addition to himself, and filled out the ensemble with New York musicians until March 1941. While taking a few months' vacation in the spring of 1941 to reassess what to do next, Shaw recorded in another small-group format with three horns and a four-man rhythm section with the addition of a dozen strings. By September, he formed a big band with seven brass, five saxes, four rhythm, and fifteen strings. On December 7, three months into the tour, the 31-piece band was in the midst of a matinee performance in Providence, Rhode Island, when he was given a note about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The note instructed him to tell military personnel to return to their bases. Shaw was shaken by the news, as he told interviewer Freddie Johnson in 1994: "Everything seemed to pale into insignificance, and I had to go back out on stage and announce "Star Dust" or something, and it sounded so fatuous. Here we were in the middle of a conflagration. On impulse, I went to the front row of the band where Les Robinson, first alto man, was sitting, and I said, 'Pass the word. This is two weeks' notice.' It went through the band and we played the rest of that show with a pall over it. Anyway, I joined the Navy."