Artie Shaw

Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, May 23, 1910, in New York; died December 30, 2004, in Thousand Oaks, California) was an American clarinettist, composer, bandleader and author of fiction and non-fiction. He grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, bought a saxophone with money earned in a grocery store at thirteen, switched to clarinet at sixteen and left home to tour with a band.

In the 1920s and 1930s he was music director and arranger for the violinist Austin Wylie’s orchestra in Cleveland, then played with Irving Aaronson’s Commanders, where he absorbed symphonic music. In 1936 he formed his own band and startled the swing world with Interlude in B-flat, scored for rhythm section and string quartet — an early example of what would later be called Third Stream.

In 1938 he recorded Cole Porter’s Begin the Beguine and became a pop star overnight; that year he also hired Billie Holiday as his band’s full-time singer, the first white bandleader to tour the segregated South with a black female vocalist. In 1940 he spun off the small group the Gramercy Five, with Johnny Guarnieri on harpsichord and Al Hendrickson on electric guitar; Summit Ridge Drive sold a million copies, and Concerto for Clarinet and Frenesi belong to the same period.

He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944, leading a band that toured the South Pacific. Weary of playing the same popular tunes, he left the music business for good in 1954 and turned to writing. In 2004 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

This entry adds Mr. Clarinet (1963, Tops L1755) and The Last Recordings: Rare & Unreleased (1992, MusicMasters 01612-65071-2): the first gathers 1945–46 recordings with his big band and the Gramercy Five (The Hornet, The Glider, Anniversary Song), the second preserves his final sessions of February–June 1954, with pianist Hank Jones, bassist Tommy Potter and drummer Irv Kluger.

Cover photograph: William P. Gottlieb, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (File:Artie Shaw (Gottlieb 07773).jpg). Body photograph: still from the 1940 film Second Chorus, public domain (File:Artie Shaw in Second Chorus 2.jpg).