Artie Shaw

b. Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, 23 May 1910, New York City, New York, USA. Shaw took up the alto saxophone at the age of 12 and a few years later was playing in a Connecticut dance band. In 1926, he switched to clarinet and spent the next three years working in Cleveland, Ohio, as arranger and musical director for Austin Wylie. He also played in Irving Aaronson's popular band, doubling on tenor saxophone. In New York from the end of 1929, Shaw became a regular at after-hours sessions, sitting in with leading jazzmen and establishing a reputation as a technically brilliant clarinettist. He made numerous record dates with dance bands and jazz musicians including Teddy Wilson, with whom he appeared on some of Billie Holiday's sessions. In 1936, Shaw formed a band which included strings for a concert and, with the addition of regular dance band instruments, secured a recording contract. The band did not last long and in April 1937 he formed a conventional big band that was an immediate success, thanks in part to melodic arrangements by Jerry Gray. The band made several records including Begin The Beguine, which was a huge popular success. Musically, Shaw's band was one of the best of the period and, during the first couple of years of its existence, included Johnny Best, Cliff Leeman, Les Robinson, Georgie Auld, Tony Pastor and Buddy Rich. During 1938 Shaw briefly had Holidayas the band's singer; but racial discrimination in New York hotels and on the band's radio shows led to a succession of disagreeable confrontations which eventually compelled the singer to quit. Other singers Shaw used were Kitty Kallen and Helen Forrest. Always uneasy with publicity and the demands of the public, Shaw abruptly folded the band late in 1939, but a featured role in the 1940 Fred Astaire-Paulette Goddard film, Second Chorus, brought another hit, Frenesi, and he quickly reformed a band. The new band included a string section and a band-within-a-band, the Gramercy Five. The big band included Billy Butterfield, Jack Jenney, Nick Fatool and Johnny Guarnieri. In the small group, Guarnieri switched from piano to harpsichord to create a highly distinctive sound. More successful records followed, including Concert For Clarinet, Summit Ridge Drive and Special Delivery Stomp. Shaw's dislike of celebrity caused him to disband once again, but he soon reformed only to be forced to fold when the USA entered the war. In 1942 he headed a band in the US Navy which included several leading jazzmen. After the war he formed a new band that featured Roy Eldridge, Dodo Marmarosa, Barney Kessel, Chuck Gentry, Stan Fishelson and other top musicians. This band, like all the others, was short-lived and during the rest of the '40s Shaw periodically formed bands only to break them up again within a few months. At the same time he also studied classical guitar and began to develop a secondary career as a writer. By the mid-'50s he had retired from music and spent much of his time writing. He lived for a number of years in Spain but in the late '60s returned to the USA, where he continued to expand his writing career. In the '80s he reformed a band, under the direction of Dick Johnson, and performed at special concerts. In 1985 a film documentary, Time Is All You've Got, traced his career in detail. In June 1992 he appeared in London at a concert performance where Bob Wilber recreated some of his music.
During the late '30s and early '40s Shaw was set up as a rival to Benny Goodman, but the antagonism was a creation of publicists; in reality the two men were amicable towards one another. Nevertheless, fans of the pair were divided, heatedly arguing the respective merits of their idol. Stylistically, Shaw's playing was perhaps slightly cooler than Goodman's, although his jazz sense was no less refined. Like Goodman, Shaw was a technical marvel, playing with remarkable precision yet always swinging. His erratic bandleading career, allied as it was to a full private life—amongst his eight wives were some of Hollywood's most glamorous stars—militated against his ever achieving the same level of success as Goodman or many other bandleading contemporaries. Nevertheless, his bands were always musicianly and his frequent hiring of black musicians, including Holiday, Eldridge and Oran ‘Hot Lips’ Page, helped to break down racial barriers in music.