Artie Shaw

The Reluctant King of Swing: Artie Shaw’s Pursuit of Perfection

He was the clarinetist who never quite fit in the box—a restless perfectionist with the soul of a philosopher and the chops of a storm. Artie Shaw, born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, wasn’t just one of the swing era’s titans; he was its most defiant intellectual, a man who played with the precision of a surgeon and the emotional heft of a heartbreaker. When he passed away in 2004 at the age of 94, the jazz world lost not just a bandleader but a provocateur, a thorn in the side of mediocrity, and a beacon for anyone who believed that music should both thrill and challenge.

In the heat of the ‘30s and ‘40s, when big bands were the country’s pulse and the dance floor its playground, Shaw led with fire and elegance. He didn’t just ride the wave—he carved the groove. “Begin the Beguine” turned Cole Porter’s urbane elegance into a swirling clarinet epiphany. And when he wrapped himself around Carmichael’s “Stardust,” it was like time slowed to match the honeyed wail of his horn. Yet for Shaw, success was a burden, fame a trap. He disbanded his orchestras as quickly as he built them, always searching for something finer, purer—more Artie.

He had a gift for knowing who could lift a tune from good to unforgettable. Billie Holiday with her bruised brilliance, Mel Tormé's velvet touch, Buddy Rich’s snare thunder, and Barney Kessel’s six-string elegance—all passed through Shaw’s musical proving ground. Even as swing hit its apex, he peeled off into smaller ensembles like The Gramercy Five, where harpsichord met clarinet in baroque intimacy.

When he cut his final recordings in 1954—those crisp, elusive MusicMasters sides later titled The Last Recordings: Rare and Unreleased—it wasn’t with a bang, but with a smirk. Shaw wasn’t quitting because he couldn’t keep up. He was leaving because the world couldn’t keep up with him.

He turned to the page instead of the stage, writing fiction and baring his soul in The Trouble With Cinderella, a memoir masquerading as an existential riddle. He mused on life, sex, art, and the American myth with the same sharp mind he once used to sculpt solos. And then, just as mysteriously as he vanished, he returned in 1983 with a new Artie Shaw Orchestra, lending his name, if not his reed, to a band led by fellow clarinetist Dick Johnson.

That band rolls on to this day, an echo of Shaw’s relentless search for beauty and truth, one eighth note at a time. He was a man of swing and stillness, who played the clarinet like it held the answer to life’s riddles—and maybe, for a few years, it did.

Bill King: One of the first things that impressed me, beyond the stunning musicianship, on the new MusicMasters collection of rare and unreleased recordings of the last Gramercy Five is the clarity and balance. Was there a lot of thought and preparation before entering the studio?

Artie Shaw: I did that all the time. People are just discovering it. If you lie around the gutter, enough people fall all over you. People say they were extraordinary. Well, if they're extraordinary now, then they were extraordinary then, but nobody was listening. One reviewer said he listened to several sessions back then but never gave them much thought. Now he hears them and says, "My God, they're wonderful!"

It reminds me of another story. Miles was playing somewhere, and somebody came up after one of the sets and said, "Miles, your band sounds good tonight." Miles replied, "Maybe you listened well tonight." I keep saying to people, you need to listen right. When we were doing those records, we played music all the time, but nobody was paying attention. Nobody would release those records; I don't know whether you saw the Gary Giddins piece in The Village Voice. He says that John Hammond, who had considerable influence at CBS, recommended these as the best jazz clarinet records he had ever heard. CBS was just not interested.

B.K: Do you suspect CBS only heard you with your orchestra, so the small group settings seemed utterly foreign to their ears?

Artie: I don't know for sure, but I think it might have been something like that. I think they might have had all the information on me they could program in their minds. I was a bandleader with a popular band. They were making up rules about what was and was not jazz, and, of course, in those days, we had the three-minute and 20-second form we had to stay within. Nobody could play much more than 16 bars.

Here for the first time, I was spread out and had some time to do something. It floored them. They put me away. I was a pop bandleader, so how could I be good, and have all those broads and have all that money? Many people are reluctant to progress. They get a formula that works, and then like a bunch of monkeys on strings, they jump up and down and keep doing the same things. It was impossible for me to keep playing the same stuff. It's like telling a tree to stop growing. The straitjacket was too painful. I began to think I can't live like this. I can't keep playing Begin the Beguine for the rest of my life. I said, if this is what you want, I feel fraudulent. So, I said goodbye and quit the business. I don't want to keep repeating myself and walking in my footsteps.

B.K: How did the hits occur?
Artie: They just happened. I was returning to the business because I needed to earn some money. It was the only reason to go back and play in those saloons, which were all you could play in those days. Now they call it a concert when Eddie Murphy gets on stage and says, mother…. for two hours. A concert was unheard of in my days, so I said to hell with bigger audiences who expect the same thing. I'll play smaller clubs for smaller audiences. Even if they didn't know what we were doing, at least they'd sit there and pretend to know.

I thought if I had to go out for a year, I'd have to make a certain amount to let me get the best group I can get so I won't be bored to death. I'm still growing musically. I do things now in my sleep; I couldn't get away with it on the bandstand. I've become a writer instead. In writing, you can put anything you want on that blank page. Nobody is saying, don't. As long as you can afford a ream of paper, you can keep writing.

B.K: What are you writing?
Artie: I'm writing a long, long book. I've published another one in the meantime; you might not have heard. It's called The Best of Intentions and Other Stories and is published by John Daniel in Santa Barbara. The book I'm working on now started ten years ago. I've been working and working, taking time off, and back to working again. It's one of what I hope will ultimately be a trilogy called the Education of Albee Snow. It's a book about a jazz musician and his life journey, from childhood to his death.

The first book will be titled Sideman. It deals with the years as a young kid learning how to play and discovering what jazz is all about. Nobody knows what a jazz musician is. He didn't wake up one day able to play jazz. By the time the first book ends, he'll have his first band, thinking this will solve all his problems as he learns about the world. It's a novel education. It's a big job. I have about 1900 computer pages. I've finished writing it, so I'm now editing it.

Unfortunately, an editor will see my name on a book and give it to a jazz reviewer who often doesn't know what this is all about because I'm not writing about jazz. I'm writing about a human being who is curious about everything on earth but plays jazz for a living. He finds it an empty and unfulfilling life and wants to escape it. Meanwhile, to make some money, so he can afford to get out of it, he goes on and on. He plays the radio, which was about the most horrible background music there was. He tries getting a band together, but that doesn't work either. By the time I'm done, I hope to reduce it to about 600 pages.

B.K: You broke through specific racial barriers when you brought Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, and others into your band.
Artie: I hired people whose music I liked. If I could have had a half-white or black band, I would have done it. I hired the musicians I could afford. Billie didn't work out; she couldn't handle it. Roy couldn't handle it. Lips could handle it. I have a concise attention span; I'm easily bored. When I've explored a thing, I say that's enough of that; let's try something else. Somebody asked me why I kept changing. Beethoven wrote symphonies, sonatas, string quartets, piano pieces, septets, and so on. Why did he do that? Why did Picasso keep changing styles? Why does any artist develop? If you're an entertainer, then why would you want to change? But I'm not an entertainer; I'm not cut out to be an entertainer; I like to please myself.

B.K: Was there much editing on the Musicmaster's collection?
Artie: I edited the sound a bit to achieve an approximation of today's state-of-the-art sound. We had excellent facilities. I went into a very good studio and hired the best engineer I could find. Nobody wanted these recordings, so I did it myself. I had total control over the sessions.

When we were recording, we'd take our time. We'd go after working The Embers at night. We'd finish at 4 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. in the studio and go until Noon or as long as they could handle it. We were pretty relaxed. There were no arrangements. I'd give them a one-chorus lead; we'd play it and then throw it away. After that, we'd be on our own. We developed formulas that allowed us to read each other's minds. When the guitar played, there would be a vibraphone behind him; when the vibraphone played, the guitar was behind him or laid out. I wanted it very thin, like chamber music.

People don't realize in each generation in the entire history of art, there weren't more than a dozen great artists, and here we are with hundreds of thousands of musicians spewed out of music schools all over the country. Do we expect to have hundreds of thousands of artists? An outstanding artist is a rare occurrence. Every time a real artist does something, he does something new. Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet – they all did original things. Even during my day of the swing band, only five or six of us were doing anything. Jimmy Lunceford was overlooked entirely. He was one of the first good ones. Before that, Jean Goldkettle, nobody even heard about him. That was a hell of a band in the '20s. Bix and Joe Venuti were in the band.

Now here's the Smithsonian putting out a record called Big Band Music from The Beginning to The Fifties, and they start with Paul Whiteman. That wasn't a big band any more than a football band is a big band. We confuse ourselves with language. We're using words we don't understand. Since our language is imprecise, our thinking is inaccurate.

B.K: Didn't you and Benny Goodman play together in the same studio band saxophone section in the early '30s?
Artie: A couple of times, but not very often. I'd usually play the lead, and Benny would play the second alto. Bix never got into it because he couldn't read good enough. Bunny Berigan was there, along with a whole lot of other fine musicians.

Benny was a strange cat. It bothered him that I played lead alto. He had a terrible sound on alto. I remember one program where there was a little piece written for alto he liked and asked to play it. I said sure because I didn't care; it was stale for me. He played it, and the band leader stopped us and asked who was playing. I sat back in my chair, and Benny said, "I am." The band leader said, "Well, give it back to Shaw." It wasn't delightful.

I remember sitting down with him at lunch, this was when both of us were making more money than they were printing, and he was trying to talk to me about agents. I told him I was just into playing music. The idea that we weren't in competition seemed foreign to him.

B.K: You have said you enjoyed George Shearing's sound. What was it you found so appealing?
Artie: I liked the blend of instruments. George Shearing once came up to me and told me I was why he put together that group. He said he used to listen to the Gramercy Five Records. I like his sound, so I tried it on a couple of pieces.

B.K.: Do you listen to any of the current crop of jazz players?
Artie: I try, but it's pretty meagre out there. There's a lot of honking and 'blapping' going on. I think Eddie Daniels is a good athlete. He moves fast, but I don't see that has much to do with music. I liked Woody Shaw. He was terrific. I like some of the things Miles did with Gil. I'm happy to have lived long enough to see the response to the Gramercy Five recordings. Those musicians were great players.