Remembering the irreverant but brilliant Bandleader Artie Shaw

When I spent time talking to Artie Shaw back in the late nineties, he was a most difficult subject, although once he allowed himself talk about his life as a musician,  he certainly became interesting and even subjective, always praising his band's musicians.  Artie's depth as a thinker and reputation as a constantly analyzing musician followed him from his restless days as an outspoken  bandleader right up to the end of his days.

Well, Artie Shaw died on December 30th 2004 at the age of 94 and will indeed be remembered. Not so much for his list of marriages to movie stars Lana Turner, Evelyn Keyes and Ava Gardner,  among others, but for his superlative career in music.

Artie Shaw was an accomplished musician, a star of great magnitude, but when he thought he had enough of the disciplined life of a band leader and realized he could no longer spend every day playing and playing the clarinet to remain a perfect musician, he stopped playing and stopped leading his band taking off to become a writer.

" I did all you can do with a clarinet, any more would have been less," he once told me.

During the 1930s and '40's he was at his peak with recordings of "Begin the Beguine," "Frenesi" and "Back Bay Shuffle." His quintet, the Gramercy Five, performed within the band with a handful of its own hits. He never would talk about his great hits because he said we was sick of playing them over and over and over, and his favorite recordings were the ones he would make " the following session."

"When we recorded Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine," in 1938, we soared, even though it was the 'B-side . That tune was nowhere, and suddenly a guy named Artie Shaw comes along and makes a record of it with a totally different arrangement, and it becomes a hit. How do you figure it?" Artie said, "You seek perfection and settle for what you get."

"Begin the Beguine" is always high on the list of listener polls, even today.

During the war, his group of U.S. Navy musicians traveled widely throughout the South Pacific and entertained the troops in very trying times under very difficult circumstances until he and his group actually became sick with combat fatigue and could not go on performing.  After some R & R in Australia, he returned the the states very bitter. 

Sure, Artie was volatile, but he was also superbly intelligent. His book, "The Trouble with Cinderella," first serialized in a music monthly, was a fine piece of writing and mirrored his life.

Today, the Artie Shaw Big Band still performs under the leadership of Dick Johnson, a superb clarinetist and protégé' of Shaw himself.

I asked Artie what would be his epitaph, and he replied:

"He did the best he could with the material at hand. But, the material in my hand was not very good. But, I did the best I could."

Goodbye to the irreverent Artie Shaw, who added: "You know Richard, my new epitaph will be, after this interview.......'Go Away.' "