Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
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Bandleader, clarinetist, composer and arranger Artie Shaw has died at home in Los Angelesn on Friday. His health had declined since Thanksgiving. He was 94 years old.
Shaw was a leading swing-era figure and a top-flight clarinetist who demonstrated a great jazz facility when playing either uptempo numbers or ballads. Along with rival Benny Goodman, Shaw was known for racially integrating his bands in the 1940s, utilizing the talents of Billie Holiday and Roy Eldridge, among others.
Born May 23, 1910, in New York, Shaw grew up in New Haven, Conn., where he got his start playing in dance bands during the ‘20s. The latter part of the ‘20s saw him playing in Cleveland, Chicago and New York, acting as a music director, arranging, jamming and discovering the music of Debussy and Stravinsky. It was in New York that he started working as a freelance studio musician, and in 1936 formed his first band, made up of a string quartet, three rhythm and clarinet. They performed a hit concert, playing Shaw’s “Interlude In B Flat.” Adding a trombone, sax, singer and two trumpets, Shaw signed a record deal with Brunswick. In 1937, Shaw formed a more conventional swing band, with whom he recorded his first big hit, Cole Porter’s “Begin The Beguine,” in 1938.
The following year, after making his breakthrough, Shaw left the music scene and moved to Hollywood in 1940, where he worked for films and recorded his next big hit, “Frenesi” (1940, RCA Victor). Later touring with his Gramercy Five band, Shaw made his way back to New York, where he worked until he enlisted in the Navy (1942). After his discharge he formed his best jazz-oriented band, with Eldridge, which featured the hit “Little Jazz” (1945, RCA Victor). He continued to play with his Gramercy Five band after the war, and in 1954, went into retirement.
In 1996, Shaw was elected by the DownBeat Critics into the Down Beat Hall of Fame.
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