Artie Shaw's 'My Heart Stood Still'

One of Artie Shaw's many great recordings Rodgers and Hart's "My Heart Stood Still." It was written in 1927 for the musical A Connecticut Yankee.

The Artie Shaw band recording was made in 1939.

Artie Shaw was famous for his many wives!

One of the top ten bands of the Big Band Era was clearly led by Artie Shaw. Artie, of course, is remembered for his fabulous music...."Stardust" and Begin The Beguine" are two of the greatest big band recordings of all time. At a recent lecture I gave on the Big Band Era, many in the audience were also very impressed with an important side of Artie's personal life, the fact that he was married eight times and the fame of his brides.

They included actresses Lana Turner (wife No. 3, 1940), Ava Gardner (No. 5, 1945), Evelyn Keyes (No. 8, 1957) and novelist Kathleen Winsor, author of the 1944 best-seller “Forever Amber” (No. 6, 1946).

Lana Turner and Artie Shaw

Here's the complete list (from Wiki); A self-proclaimed "very difficult man," Shaw was married eight times: Jane Cairns (1932–33; annulled); Margaret Allen (1934–37; divorced); actress Lana Turner (1940; annulled); Betty Kern (1942–43; divorced), the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern; actress Ava Gardner (1945–46; divorced); Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor (1946–48; annulled); actress Doris Dowling (1952–56; divorced); and actress Evelyn Keyes(1957–85; divorced).

He had one son, Steven Kern, with Betty Kern, and another son, Jonathan Shaw (a well-known tattoo artist who founded Fun City Tattoo), with Doris Dowling.The marriage to Keyes, best known for playing the middle of the three O’Hara sisters in “Gone With the Wind,” lasted the longest, until 1985, but they led separate lives for much of that time. “I like her very much and she likes me, but we’ve found it about impossible to live together,” he said in a 1973 interview.

Ava and Lana

Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive. His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse in fact drove Turner to have a nervous breakdown, soon after which she divorced him.

Note: With that many ex-wives, collecting alimony in most cases, it is not surprising that his theme song was "Nightmare!" When asked why he married so many times....his answer..."Because they asked me!"

Artie Shaw's many wives!

Band leader Artie Shaw was married eight times!

They included actresses Lana Turner (wife No. 3, 1940), Ava Gardner (No. 5, 1945), Evelyn Keyes (No. 8, 1957) and novelist Kathleen Winsor, author of the 1944 best-seller “Forever Amber” (No. 6, 1946).

ARTIE SHAW (getty)

Here's the complete list (from Wiki); A self-proclaimed "very difficult man," Shaw was married eight times: Jane Cairns (1932–33; annulled); Margaret Allen (1934–37; divorced); actress Lana Turner (1940; annulled); Betty Kern (1942–43; divorced), the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern; actress Ava Gardner (1945–46; divorced); Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor (1946–48; annulled); actress Doris Dowling (1952–56; divorced); and actress Evelyn Keyes(1957–85; divorced).

The marriage to Keyes, best known for playing the middle of the three O’Hara sisters in “Gone With the Wind,” lasted the longest, until 1985, but they led separate lives for much of that time. “I like her very much and she likes me, but we’ve found it about impossible to live together,” he said in a 1973 interview.

 Note: With that many ex-wives, collecting alimony in most cases, it is not surprising that his theme song was "Nightmare!"  When asked why he married so many times....his answer..."Because they asked me!"He had one son, Steven Kern, with Betty Kern, and another son, Jonathan Shaw (a well-known tattoo artist who founded Fun City Tattoo), with Doris Dowling. Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive. His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse in fact drove Turner to have a nervous breakdown, soon after which she divorced him.

We remember the King of the Clarinet... Artie Shaw

Artie Shaw CD

On the eve of America's entry into World War II, TIME magazine reported that to the German masses the United States meant "sky-scrapers, Clark Gable, and Artie Shaw."

Artie's story starts in New Haven, Connecticut, where he spent his formative years and at an early age became a compulsive reader, and where at 14 he began to play the saxophone (and several months later the clarinet), and at 15 left home to play all over America, and meanwhile study the work of his early jazz idols, such as Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, and Louis Armstrong.

At the age of 16 Artie went to Cleveland, where he remained for three years, the last two working with Austin Wylie, then Cleveland's top band leader, for whom Shaw took over all the arranging and rehearsing chores. In 1927 Artie heard several "race" records, the kind then being made solely for distribution in black (or "colored," as they were then known) districts. After listening entranced to Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five playing Savoy Blues, West End Blues, and other now-classic Louis Armstrong records from the late 1920's, Artie made a pilgrimage to Chicago's Savoy Ballroom to hear the great trumpet player in person. Back in Cleveland, Artie, now 17, won an essay-writing contest which took him out to Hollywood in 1928, where he ran into a couple of musicians he had known back in New Haven who were now working in Irving Aaronson's band. A year later, at the age of 19, Artie moved to Hollywood to join the Aaronson band.

Shortly afterwards, the Aaronson band spent the summer of 1930 in Chicago, where Artie "discovered a whole new world" (as he would much later write, in a semi-autobiographical book The Trouble With Cinderella first published in 1952) when he heard several recordings of some of the then avant-garde symphonic composers' work: Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, Ravel, et al, whose work would eventually influence most of our contemporary jazz performers. This influence would soon surface in Shaw's own work when he began to use strings, woodwinds, etc.-notably in a highly unusual album entitled Modern Music for Clarinet, selections of which were also featured in several of Shaw's Carnegie Hall concerts.

When the Aaronson band came to New York in 1930, Artie decided to stay there, and within the year, at age 21, he became the top lead-alto sax and clarinet player in the New York radio and recording studios. After a couple of years of commercial work, he became disillusioned with the music business and bought some acreage with an old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He moved out there to spend the next year chopping wood for a living and trying to train himself as a writer-of books rather than music-since there seemed to be no way at that time to make a decent living playing the kind of music that interested him.

In 1934 he returned to New York to pick up his formal education where it had been abruptly terminated when he left high school at 15, and resumed studio work to support himself. He made his first public appearance as a leader in 1936, in a Swing Concert (history's first) held at Broadway's Imperial Theatre. This proved to be a major turning point in his career, and would in fact ultimately have a significant impact on the future of American Big Band jazz. Shaw (who was then completely unknown to the general public) did something totally unorthodox to fill one of the three minute interludes in front of the stage curtain while such then established headliners as Tommy Dorsey, the Bob Crosby Band, the Casa Loma Band, etc. were being set up. Instead of the usual jazz group (a rhythm section fronted by a soloist), Shaw composed a piece of music for an octet consisting of a legitimate string quartet, a rhythm section (without piano), and himself on clarinet-an extremely innovative combination of instruments at that time. Fronting this unusual group, he played a piece he had written expressly for the occasion, Interlude in B-flat, which the group presented to a totally unprepared and, as it turned out, wildly enthusiastic audience. (This, by the way, is the first example of what has now come to be labeled "Third Stream Music.")

Shaw could scarcely have known that within a short time he would make a hit record of a song called Begin the Beguine, which he now jokingly refers to as "a nice little tune from one of Cole Porter's very few flop shows." Shortly before that he had hired Billie Holiday as his band vocalist (the first white band leader to employ a black female singer as a full-time member of his band), and within a year after the release of Beguine, the Artie Shaw Orchestra was earning as much as $60,000 weekly-a figure that would nowadays amount to more than $600,000 a week!

The breakthrough hit record catapulted him into the ranks of top band leaders and he was immediately dubbed the new "King of Swing". Today, Shaw's recording of Begin the Beguine sells thousands and has become one of the best-selling records in history.

Superstardom turned out to be a status that Shaw (as a compulsive perfectionist) found totally uncongenial. Within a year he abruptly took off for another respite from the music business, this time in Mexico. In March of 1940 he re-emerged with a recording of Frenesi, which became another smash hit. For this recording session, he used a large studio band with woodwinds, French horns, and a full string section along with the normal dance band instrumentation-another first in big band jazz history. Later that year he formed a touring band with a good-sized string section, with which he recorded several more smash hits, among them his by now classic version of Star Dust, plus a number of other fine musical recordings such as Moonglow, Dancing in the Dark, Concerto for Clarinet, and many others.

Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the unpredictable Shaw quit the music business once again, this time to enlist in the U.S. Navy. After finishing boot training, he was asked to form a service band which eventually won the national Esquire poll. He spent the next year and a half taking his music into the forward Pacific war zones, playing as many as four concerts a day throughout the entire Southwest Pacific, on battleships, aircraft carriers, and repair ships, ending with tours of Army, Navy, and Marine bases (and even a number of ANZAC ones when his band arrived in New Zealand and Australia). On returning to the U.S.-after having undergone several near-miss bombing raids in Guadalcanal-physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, he was given a medical discharge from the Navy. His troubled marriage to Betty Kern (the daughter of composer Jerome Kern) ended in divorce, and in 1944 Shaw formed another civilian band-featuring such great performers as pianist Dodo Marmarosa, guitarist Barney Kessel, and the phenomenal trumpeter Roy Eldridge-with which he toured the country and made many excellent recordings.

In 1947, during another hiatus, Shaw spent about a year in New York City in an intensive study of the relation of the clarinet to non-jazz (or, as he prefers to call it, "long-form") music. This culminated in a tour in 1949 of some of the finest musical organizations in America, such as the Rochester Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Eric Leinsdorf, the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., the Dayton Symphony, three appearances with New York's "Little Orchestra" (one in Newark, a second in Brooklyn's Academy of Music, and the last in Town Hall). After that Shaw recorded the aforementioned Modern Music for Clarinet album, containing a collection of remarkably well crafted symphonic orchestrations of short works by Shostakovich, Debussy, Ravel, Milhaud, Poulenc, Kabalevsky, Granados, Gould, along with Cole Porter and George Gershwin. About that time Shaw again appeared in Carnegie Hall, as guest soloist with the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Leon Barzin, where he received critical acclaim for his rendition of Nicolai Berezowski's formidable Concerto for Clarinet, which he had previously presented in its world premiere a few weeks earlier with the Denver Symphony. Around that time he performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein at a benefit performance, held at Ebbetts Field, for Israel's Philharmonic Orchestra. During that year, Shaw also played numerous chamber music recitals with string quartets, at various colleges and universities around the country.

Another of Shaw's ventures during that period was his great 1949 band, which was virtually ignored by the general public until 1989, when an album of some of its work was released on compact discs by MusicMasters, and has since received remarkable worldwide reviews.

In 1951 Shaw again quit the music business, this time moving to Duchess County, New York, where he bought a 240 acre dairy farm and wrote his first book, a semi-autobiographical work entitled The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity, sections of which have appeared in many anthologies, and which is still in print.

Throughout the early fifties, Artie Shaw assembled several big bands and small combos-as well as his own symphony orchestra, (to play a one-week engagement at the opening of a large New York jazz club called Bop City). One such combo which was formed in late 1953 and recorded in 1954, a group known as the Gramercy 5 (a name he took from the New York telephone exchange of the time), maintain an amazingly high degree of popularity to this day despite the onslaught of Rock, MTV, and other such commercial phenomena.

In 1954 Artie Shaw made his last public appearance as an instrumentalist when he put together a new Gramercy 5 made up of such superb modern musicians as pianist Hank Jones, guitarist Tal Farlow, bassist Tommy Potter, et al. The most comprehensive sampling of that group (as well as a number of others, going all the way back to 1936 and on up through this final set of records) can be heard on a four record album, now a rare item, released in 1984 by Book of the Month Records, entitled: Artie Shaw: A Legacy, which has also received rave reviews. Some of this music was re-issued on two double CD's by MusicMasters as Artie Shaw: The Last Recordings, Rare and Unreleased, and Artie Shaw: More Last Recordings, The Final Sessions.

Artie Shaw packed his clarinet away once and for all in 1954. In 1955 he left the United States and built a spectacular house on the brow of a mountain on the coast of Northeast Spain, where he lived for five years. On his return to America in 1960 he settled in a small town named Lakeville, in northwestern Connecticut, where he continued his writing, and in 1964 finished a second book (consisting of three novellas) entitled I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! In 1973, he moved back to California again, finally ending up in 1978 in Newbury Park, a small town about 40 miles west of Los Angeles, situated in what he refers to as "Southern California pickup-truck country."

On first meeting Artie Shaw, young Wynton Marsalis remarked, "This man's got some history." Shaw is regarded by many as the finest and most innovative of all jazz clarinetists, a leader of several of the greatest musical aggregations ever assembled, and one of the most adventurous and accomplished figures in American music.

As Artie Shaw went on into his nineties, he developed a crusty humor, as evidenced by an epitaph for himself he wrote for Who's Who in America a few years ago at the request of the editors: "He did the best he could with the material at hand."

Artie died on December 30, 2004 (aged 94) in Thousand Oaks, California.

(Edited from the Artie Shaw Orchestra website)

What was life on the road for a musician in the big band era?

Q. "What was life on the road for a musician in the 'big band era'?"

A. The life of a big band musician, even in the top bands of the late 30's and early 40's, was anything but glamorous.

Artie Shaw

Food too often meant meals in greasy diners that announced via neon signs that they had "Good Eats" or many times simply sandwiches and beer back on the bus. The bus was the primary form of transportation, particularly due to the fact that very few bands were touring nationally.

Most worked areas or regions such as New England, the Upper Midwest, California, etc. When not sleeping on the bus during overnight journeys to the next play date or "gig" they would stay at hotels that were never of the "five star" variety.That was true for the white members of an intergrated band....non-white members often had to stay in private homes or boarding houses with three or four per room.

Pay, was also, a major problem. It was never generous (Benny Goodman was notoriously "tight with a buck"). With this type of nomadic life it is not surprising to find alcholism, and drugs all too common.

The quality and comfort of the band bus rose, naturally, with the commercial success of the band. My favorite bus story involves the early days of the Artie Shaw band. Money was tight and the bus leaked, but a savior appeared in the shape of Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey's band was getting national attention, particularly due to the popularity of the skinny boy vocalist that Tommy had hired away from Harry James (Francis Albert Sinatra, of course).

Flush with new found financial success, Tommy purchased a new bus. Artie Shaw jumped at the opportunity to buy Dorsey's bus. It took almost every penny he had....so much so that for many months after, the Artie Shaw band toured the North East in a bus that was still painted with the Tommy Dorsey name!

After the war (WW2) many musicians gave up the road life for a wife, house, children and a dog. And...the ballroom dancers of the pre-war era married and turned to the home as an entertainment center in the late 40's and early 50's. The centerpiece was the big box in the living room with the small black and white screen that became their 'window on the world.' Life was changed forever.

Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman: who was the better musician?

"Q. What are the differences between the styles of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman?

A. This is a question from Yahoo's Answer section. Here is the answer they provided;
"I could not find any differences between the two, they were both accomplished clarinettist's and both were major soloists with their own bands blending commercialism with interesting musical values both being dedicated with unflinching values."

Artie Shaw had an answer when asked the same question. Artie repled "Benny Goodman plays clarinet, I play music."

Benny Goodman, of course, was a pioneer in big band swing who was one of the most important band leaders of the era. He was dubbed "The King of Swing' in 1936 (by Gene Krupa?). Artie, later was declared the "King" with the great success of his landmark recordings of "Stardust" and "Begin The Beguine."  Earlier, In response to Goodman's nickname, the "King of Swing", Shaw's fans dubbed him the "King of the Clarinet." Shaw, however, felt the titles were reversed. "Benny Goodman played clarinet, I played music," he said.

Artie Shaw's Frenesi

A beautiful recording from Artie Shaw and his orchestra.

The Artie Shaw story

The Artie Shaw Orchestra is playing Saturday night at the Centenary Stage Company on the campus of Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey.
 

On the eve of America's entry into World War II, TIME magazine reported that to the German masses the United States meant "sky-scrapers, Clark Gable, and Artie Shaw." Some 42 years after that, in December l983, Artie Shaw made a brief return to the bandstand, after thirty years away from music, not to play his world-famous clarinet but to launch his latest (and still touring) orchestra at the newly refurbished Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. 

Oddly enough, New Rochelle isn't all that far from New Haven, Connecticut, where Artie Shaw spent his formative years and at an early age became a compulsive reader, and where at 14 he began to play the saxophone (and several months later the clarinet), and at 15 left home to play all over America, and meanwhile study the work of his early jazz idols, such as Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer, and Louis Armstrong. 

At the age of 16 Artie went to Cleveland, where he remained for three years, the last two working with Austin Wylie, then Cleveland's top band leader, for whom Shaw took over all the arranging and rehearsing chores. In 1927 Artie heard several "race" records, the kind then being made solely for distribution in black (or "colored," as they were then known) districts. 

After listening entranced to Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five playing Savoy Blues, West End Blues, and other now-classic Louis Armstrong records from the late 1920's, Artie made a pilgrimage to Chicago's Savoy Ballroom to hear the great trumpet player in person. Back in Cleveland, Artie, now 17, won an essay-writing contest which took him out to Hollywood in 1928, where he ran into a couple of musicians he had known back in New Haven who were now working in Irving Aaronson's band. A year later, at the age of 19, Artie moved to Hollywood to join the Aaronson band. 

Shortly afterwards, the Aaronson band spent the summer of 1930 in Chicago, where Artie "discovered a whole new world" (as he would much later write, in a semi-autobiographical book The Trouble With Cinderella first published in 1952) when he heard several recordings of some of the then avant-garde symphonic composers' work: Stravinsky, Debussy, Bartok, Ravel, et al, whose work would eventually influence most of our contemporary jazz performers. This influence would soon surface in Shaw's own work when he began to use strings, woodwinds, etc.-notably in a highly unusual album entitled Modern Music for Clarinet, selections of which were also featured in several of Shaw's Carnegie Hall concerts. 

When the Aaronson band came to New York in 1930, Artie decided to stay there, and within the year, at age 21, he became the top lead-alto sax and clarinet player in the New York radio and recording studios. After a couple of years of commercial work, he became disillusioned with the music business and bought some acreage with an old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He moved out there to spend the next year chopping wood for a living and trying to train himself as a writer-of books rather than music-since there seemed to be no way at that time to make a decent living playing the kind of music that interested him. 

In 1934 he returned to New York to pick up his formal education where it had been abruptly terminated when he left high school at 15, and resumed studio work to support himself. He made his first public appearance as a leader in 1936, in a Swing Concert (history's first) held at Broadway's Imperial Theatre. This proved to be a major turning point in his career, and would in fact ultimately have a significant impact on the future of American Big Band jazz. 

Shaw (who was then completely unknown to the general public) did something totally unorthodox to fill one of the three minute interludes in front of the stage curtain while such then established headliners as Tommy Dorsey, the Bob Crosby Band, the Casa Loma Band, etc. were being set up. Instead of the usual jazz group (a rhythm section fronted by a soloist), Shaw composed a piece of music for an octet consisting of a legitimate string quartet, a rhythm section (without piano), and himself on clarinet-an extremely innovative combination of instruments at that time. 

Fronting this unusual group, he played a piece he had written expressly for the occasion, Interlude in B-flat, which the group presented to a totally unprepared and, as it turned out, wildly enthusiastic audience. (This, by the way, is the first example of what has now come to be labeled "Third Stream Music.") 

Shaw could scarcely have known that within a short time he would make a hit record of a song called Begin the Beguine, which he now jokingly refers to as "a nice little tune from one of Cole Porter's very few flop shows." Shortly before that he had hired Billie Holiday as his band vocalist (the first white band leader to employ a black female singer as a full-time member of his band), and within a year after the release of Beguine, the Artie Shaw Orchestra was earning as much as $60,000 weekly-a figure that would nowadays amount to more than $600,000 a week!

The breakthrough hit record catapulted him into the ranks of top band leaders and he was immediately dubbed the new "King of Swing". Today, Shaw's recording of Begin the Beguine sells thousands and has become one of the best-selling records in history. 

Superstardom turned out to be a status that Shaw (as a compulsive perfectionist) found totally uncongenial. Within a year he abruptly took off for another respite from the music business, this time in Mexico. In March of 1940 he re-emerged with a recording of Frenesi, which became another smash hit. For this recording session, he used a large studio band with woodwinds, French horns, and a full string section along with the normal dance band instrumentation-another first in big band jazz history. Later that year he formed a touring band with a good-sized string section, with which he recorded several more smash hits, among them his by now classic version of Star Dust, plus a number of other fine musical recordings such as Moonglow, Dancing in the Dark, Concerto for Clarinet, and many others. 

Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the unpredictable Shaw quit the music business once again, this time to enlist in the U.S. Navy. After finishing boot training, he was asked to form a service band which eventually won the national Esquire poll. He spent the next year and a half taking his music into the forward Pacific war zones, playing as many as four concerts a day throughout the entire Southwest Pacific, on battleships, aircraft carriers, and repair ships, ending with tours of Army, Navy, and Marine bases (and even a number of ANZAC ones when his band arrived in New Zealand and Australia). On returning to the U.S.-after having undergone several near-miss bombing raids in Guadalcanal-physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, he was given a medical discharge from the Navy. His troubled marriage to Betty Kern (the daughter of composer Jerome Kern) ended in divorce, and in 1944 Shaw formed another civilian band-featuring such great performers as pianist Dodo Marmarosa, guitarist Barney Kessel, and the phenomenal trumpeter Roy Eldridge-with which he toured the country and made many excellent recordings. 

In 1947, during another hiatus, Shaw spent about a year in New York City in an intensive study of the relation of the clarinet to non-jazz (or, as he prefers to call it, "long-form") music. This culminated in a tour in 1949 of some of the finest musical organizations in America, such as the Rochester Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Eric Leinsdorf, the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., the Dayton Symphony, three appearances with New York's "Little Orchestra" (one in Newark, a second in Brooklyn's Academy of Music, and the last in Town Hall). After that Shaw recorded the aforementioned Modern Music for Clarinet album, containing a collection of remarkably well crafted symphonic orchestrations of short works by Shostakovich, Debussy, Ravel, Milhaud, Poulenc, Kabalevsky, Granados, Gould, along with Cole Porter and George Gershwin. About that time Shaw again appeared in Carnegie Hall, as guest soloist with the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Leon Barzin, where he received critical acclaim for his rendition of Nicolai Berezowski's formidable Concerto for Clarinet, which he had previously presented in its world premiere a few weeks earlier with the Denver Symphony. Around that time he performed the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein at a benefit performance, held at Ebbetts Field, for Israel's Philharmonic Orchestra. During that year, Shaw also played numerous chamber music recitals with string quartets, at various colleges and universities around the country. 

Another of Shaw's ventures during that period was his great 1949 band, which was virtually ignored by the general public until 1989, when an album of some of its work was released on compact discs by MusicMasters, and has since received remarkable worldwide reviews. 

In 1951 Shaw again quit the music business, this time moving to Duchess County, New York, where he bought a 240 acre dairy farm and wrote his first book, a semi-autobiographical work entitled The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity, sections of which have appeared in many anthologies, and which is still in print. 

Throughout the early fifties, Artie Shaw assembled several big bands and small combos-as well as his own symphony orchestra, (to play a one-week engagement at the opening of a large New York jazz club called Bop City). One such combo which was formed in late 1953 and recorded in 1954, a group known as the Gramercy 5 (a name he took from the New York telephone exchange of the time), maintain an amazingly high degree of popularity to this day despite the onslaught of Rock, MTV, and other such commercial phenomena. 

In 1954 Artie Shaw made his last public appearance as an instrumentalist when he put together a new Gramercy 5 made up of such superb modern musicians as pianist Hank Jones, guitarist Tal Farlow, bassist Tommy Potter, et al. The most comprehensive sampling of that group (as well as a number of others, going all the way back to 1936 and on up through this final set of records) can be heard on a four record album, now a rare item, released in 1984 by Book of the Month Records, entitled: Artie Shaw: A Legacy, which has also received rave reviews. Some of this music was re-issued on two double CD's by MusicMasters as Artie Shaw: The Last Recordings, Rare and Unreleased, and Artie Shaw: More Last Record_ings, The Final Sessions. 

Artie Shaw packed his clarinet away once and for all in 1954. In 1955 he left the United States and built a spectacular house on the brow of a mountain on the coast of Northeast Spain, where he lived for five years. On his return to America in 1960 he settled in a small town named Lakeville, in northwestern Connecticut, where he continued his writing, and in 1964 finished a second book (consisting of three novellas) entitled I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! In 1973, he moved back to California again, finally ending up in 1978 in Newbury Park, a small town about 40 miles west of Los Angeles, situated in what he refers to as "Southern California pickup-truck country." 

Since then, aside from a brief venture into film distribution (1954 to 1956), and a number of appearances on television and radio talk shows, Artie Shaw has had very little to do with music or show business. He still gives occasional interviews on television, radio, and newspapers and lectures all over the United States. He still conducts seminars on literature, art, and the evolution of what is now known as the Big Band Era. He has given lectures at Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the California State University at Northridge, and Memphis State University. He has received Honorary Doctorates at California Lutheran University and the University of Arizona. His home contains a library of more than 15,000 volumes, including a large collection of reference works on a wide variety of subjects ranging from Anthropology to Zen. 

Artie Shaw has been a nationally ranked precision marksman, an expert fly-fisherman, and for the past two decades has been working on the first volume of a fictional trilogy, dealing with the life of a young jazz musician of the 1920's and 30's whose story he hopes to take on up into the 1960's. 

Shaw's own life is the subject of a fine feature-length documentary by a Canadian film-maker. Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got is a painstakingly thorough examination of Shaw as he is today and as the leader of some of his great bands, including an appearance from one of his two earlier motion pictures, Second Chorus (1940). (Scenes from his other motion picture, Dancing Coed (1939), were not included in the documentary due to prohibitive cost.) In a review of the film at Los Angeles's Filmex Film Festival in the summer of 1985, Variety commented: "A riveting look back at both the big band era and one of its burning lights." The film has received glowing reviews wherever it has been shown-Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Minneapolis, Toronto, Boston, and on Cinemax-as well as in England, where it ran twice on BBC. It has also appeared at Film Festivals in Belgium, Switzerland, Australia, and Spain (where it took first prize in the documentary category). In 1986 it opened the San Francisco Film Festival, and in 1987 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded it the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature of 1986. 

On first meeting Artie Shaw, young Wynton Marsalis remarked, "This man's got some history." Shaw is regarded by many as the finest and most innovative of all jazz clarinetists, a leader of several of the greatest musical aggregations ever assembled, and one of the most adventurous and accomplished figures in American music. 

As Artie Shaw goes on into his nineties, he has also developed a crusty humor, as evidenced by an epitaph for himself he wrote for Who's Who in America a few years ago at the request of the editors: "He did the best he could with the material at hand." However, at a recent lecture to the music students of the University of Southern California, when someone mentioned having read it, Shaw said, "Yeah, but I've been thinking it over and I've decided it ought to be shorter, to make it more elegant." And after a brief pause, "I've cut it down to two words: 'Go away.'" 

Source: The Artie Shaw Orchestra website

Artie Shaw Orchestra concert in New Jersey November 19

The Artie Shaw Orchestra, one of the most compelling big-bands ever, returns to Centenary Stage Company (CSC) in Hackettstown, NJ for a one-night-only concert on Saturday, November 19^th  at 8 PM in The Whitney Chapel on campus of Centenary College. 

Dubbed “the king of swing” after his hit, Begin the Beguine, Artie Shaw (Photo above) was thereafter renown for his innovative combination of instruments.  This power-house big band has accompanied the likes of Tony Bennett, Jack Jones and Buddy DeFranco.   The band was featured at the Newport Jazz Festival, and they have toured worldwide.  The orchestra is currently under the direction of clarinetist Matt Koza  and will play many of the original arrangements that made the orchestra so popular in the 40’s and 50’s. On the eve of America's entry into World War II, TIME magazine reported that to the German masses the United States meant "sky-scrapers, Clark Gable, and Artie Shaw."  Some 42 years after that, in December  l983, Artie Shaw made a brief return to the bandstand, after thirty years away from music, to launch this latest (and still touring) orchestra at the newly refurbished Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York.

 “There's nothing like it,” said Matt Koza, director of the orchestra said,“…to stand in front of the band, to play the music, to be surrounded by the full sound of the brass and the rhythm section, it’s an unparalleled experience.”

Tickets for the Artie Shaw Orchestra can be purchased at www.centenarystageco.org or by calling the CSC Box Office at (908)979-0900. Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 day of show. 

The Nov 19^th  performance of the Artie Shaw Orchestra is made possible in part through the support of the Hackettstown Trading Post.   Jazz events at CSC are spearheaded by CSC Board Chairman Ed Coyne and Coyne Enterprises.   

The Centenary Stage Company is a not-for-profit performing arts series, in residence at Centenary College, dedicated to serving as a cultural resource for audiences of the Skylands region with professional music, theatre and dance events and arts education programs throughout the year.    All programs at the Centenary Stage Company are made possible in part through the visionary support of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the NJ State Council on the Arts, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, and CSC members and sponsors, including CSC Premiere Sponsors Heath Village and Fulton Bank (formerly Skylands Community Bank), as well as Hackettstown Regional Medical Center and Mama’s and Café Baci. ##

Crystal Cruises Big Band and Ballroom Dance theme cruises for 2012

Cruise with the best of the Big Bands: With classic dance moves currently taking center stage on "Dancing with the Stars," Crystal Cruises has expanded its live Big Band and Ballroom Dance theme cruises for 2012. 

They promise that guests will feel like stars themselves as they swing, cha-cha, and tango across the Atlantic accompanied by two old-school favorites: the Glenn Miller Orchestra on Crystal Symphony's March 19th Miami-Madeira-Lisbon voyage, and the Artie Shaw Orchestra on Crystal Serenity's Barcelona-Canary Is.-St. Maarten-Miami cruise on December 9, 2012. 
 

Whether a dancer or just toe-tapping listener, guests will be surrounded by live 17-20-piece orchestras with vocalists, plus complimentary daily dance sessions, including:

-Professional group dance lessons for all levels of experience

-Advanced dance workshops for more proficient dancers

-Twice the usual number of professional dance instructors

-Extra Ambassador Hosts to lead women without dance partners

-Dancing both in the afternoon and late into the evening 

Says Entertainment Vice President Bret Bullock: "Big Band cruises are among our most popular and highly rated Experiences of Discovery theme cruises. Travelers love the timeless elegance of Trans-Atlantic cruising, Crystal Cruises' inviting onboard luxury experience, and the added pleasure of song and dance-filled days and nights." 

"Book Now" plus "Two-for-One" promotions amount to more than $5,000 per person in savings on each voyage. If booked by October 31, March's 10-day, "all-inclusive" (Crystal's first-ever) voyage starts at a remarkably-low $1,360/person, including complimentary fine wines and premium spirits throughout the ship, open bar service in all lounges, and pre-paid gratuities for housekeeping, bar and dining staff. December's 12-day sailing is also all-inclusive, with starting fares of $2,620/person, if booked by October 31. 

Crystal Cruise's award-winning entertainment offerings include a range of venues and performances, from cabaret nightclub to piano bar saloon; acclaimed productions to headline entertainers; and sophisticated enrichment activities to in-room Blu-ray-viewing. 

For more information and Crystal reservations, contact a travel agent, call 888-799-4625, or visit www.crystalcruises.com . 

100 Top Popular Songs of the 1940s

Here is BMI's list of the most played songs (radio, sales and jukebox) from the 1940's;

Note that two Christmas songs, that enjoyed annual exposure, were the most played. The top big band recordings were from Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and Glenn Miller. The two iconic songs of World War Two, Sentimental Journey and I'll Be Seeing You are in the 11th and 12th positions.

1. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
2. The Christmas Song - Nat "King" Cole
3. God Bless The Child - Billie Holiday
4. Take The "A" Train - Duke Ellington
5. Stardust - Artie Shaw
6. Swinging On A Star - Bing Crosby
7. You Always Hurt The One You Love - Mills Brothers
8. Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy - Andrews Sisters
9. Chattanooga Choo Choo - Glenn Miller (Tex Beneke & the Modernaires)
10. Paper Doll - Mills Brothers

11. Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer - Gene Autry
12. Sentimental Journey - Les Brown (Doris Day)
13. I'll Be Seeing You - Bing Crosby / Tommy Dorsey (Frank Sinatra)
14. I'll Never Smile Again - Tommy Dorsey (Frank Sinatra)
15. Riders In The Sky (A Cowboy Legend) - Vaughn Monroe / Peggy Lee
16. Auld Lang Syne - Guy Lombardo
17. That's My Desire - Frankie Laine / Sammy Kaye
18. Don't Fence Me In - Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters / Roy Rogers / Gene Autry
19. Jingle, Jangle, Jingle - Kay Kyser / Gene Autry
20. Tuxedo Junction - Glenn Miller

21. Nature Boy - Nat "King" Cole / Frank Sinatra / Sarah Vaughan
22. Brazil - Xavier Cugat / Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly & Helen O'Connell)
23. Green Eyes - Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly & Helen O'Connell)
24. Frenesi - Artie Shaw
25. Till The End Of Time - Perry Como / Les Brown / Dick Haymes
26. Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be) - Billie Holiday / Sarah Vaughan
27. Moonlight Cocktail - Glenn Miller
28. Stormy Weather - Lena Horne
29. This Land Is Your Land - Woody Guthrie
30. You Are My Sunshine - Jimmie Davis

31. That Lucky Old Sun - Frankie Laine / Vaughn Monroe
32. (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons - Nat "King" Cole / Eddy Howard / Dinah Shore
33. (I've Got A Gal In) Kalamazoo - Glenn Miller (Marion Hutton & the Modernaires)
34. Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree - Glenn Miller / Andrews Sisters
35. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive - Johnny Mercer / Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
36. Maria Elena - Jimmy Dorsey / Wayne King
37. A String Of Pearls - Glenn Miller
38. The Gypsy - Ink Spots / Dinah Shore / Sammy Kaye (Mary Marlow)
39. Manana (Is Soon Enough For Me) - Peggy Lee
40. Near You - Francis Craig / Andrews Sisters / Larry Green / Alvino Rey

41. Amapola - Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly & Helen O'Connell)
42. Peg O' My Heart - Harmonicats / Buddy Clark / Three Suns
43. Pennsylvania 6-5000 - Glenn Miller
44. Pistol Packin' Mama - Al Dexter / Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
45. You'll Never Know - Dick Haymes / Frank Sinatra
46. To Each His Own - Eddy Howard / Ink Spots / Freddy Martin / Modernaires
47. I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire - Ink Spots / Hoarce Heidt / Tommy Tucker
48. Cool Water - Sons Of The Pioneers
49. As Time Goes By - Dooley Wilson
50. Opus No. 1 - Tommy Dorsey
51. Rum And Coca-Cola - Andrews Sisters

52. The Breeze And I - Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly)
53. We Three (My Echo, My Shadow, And Me) - Ink Spots / Tommy Dorsey (Frank Sinatra)
54. I've Heard That Song Before - Harry James (Helen Forrest)
55. Baby It's Cold Outside - Johnny Mercer & Margaret Whiting / Dinah Shore & Buddy Clark
56. Tangerine - Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly & Helen O'Connell)
57. Buttons And Bows - Dinah Shore / Dinning Sisters
58. Besame Mucho - Jimmy Dorsey (Bob Eberly & Kitty Kallen)
59. 'Round Midnight - Thelonius Monk
60. I'll Get By (As Long As I Have You) - Harry James (Dick Haymes) / Ink Spots

61. Cruising Down The River - Blue Barron / Russ Morgan / Jack Smith (Clark Sisters)
62. (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover - Kay Kyser / Glenn Miller / Kate Smith
63. Anniversary Song - Al Jolson / Dinah Shore / Guy Lombardo / Tex Beneke
64. A Night In Tunisia - Dizzy Gillespie
65. I Can Dream, Can't I - Andrews Sisters
66. In The Blue Of The Evening - Tommy Dorsey (Frank Sinatra)
67. Prisoner Of Love - Perry Como / Billy Eckstine / Ink Spots
68. Sleepy Lagoon - Harry James
69. Blues In The Night - Woody Herman / Jimmie Lunceford / Dinah Shore
70. A Tree In The Meadow - Margaret Whiting

71. Don't Get Around Much Anymore - Ink Spots / Duke Ellington / Glen Gray
72. Daddy - Sammy Kaye
73. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Vaughn Monroe
74. Oh! What It Seemed To Be - Frankie Carle / Frank Sinatra / Helen Forrest & Dick Haymes
75. Imagination - Glenn Miller / Tommy Dorsey / Ella Fitzgerald
76. There! I've Said It Again - Vaughn Monroe / Jimmy Dorsey (Teddy Walters)
77. Comin' In On A Wing And A Prayer - Song Spinners / Willie Kelly
78. Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) - Tex Williams
79. The Old Lamp-Lighter - Sammy Kaye / Kay Kyser
80. When You Wish Upon A Star - Cliff Edwards / Glenn Miller / Guy Lombardo

81. Open The Door, Richard - Count Basie / Three Flames / Dusty Fletcher
82. Is You Is Or Is You Ain't (Ma' Baby) - Louis Jordan / Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
83. Shoo-Shoo Baby - Andrews Sisters / Ella Mae Morse
84. Linda - Ray Noble (Buddy Clark) / Charlie Spivak
85. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall - Ella Fitzgerald & the Ink Spots
86. Jukebox Saturday Night - Glenn Miller (Marion Hutton, Tex Beneke & the Modernaires)
87. Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy - Red Foley
88. Some Enchanted Evening - Perry Como / Bing Crosby / Jo Stafford / Frank Sinatra
89. Rag Mop - Ames Brothers / Johnnie Lee Wills
90. On The Atchison, Topeka And Santa Fe - Johnny Mercer / Bing Crosby

91. Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition! - Kay Kyser / Merry Macs
92. I'll Walk Alone - Dinah Shore / Martha Tilton / Mary Martin
93. Ballerina - Vaughn Monroe / Buddy Clark / Bing Crosby
94. I'm looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover - Art Mooney / Russ Morgan / Alvino Rey
95. Jersey Bounce - Benny Goodman / Jimmy Dorsey
96. Mule Train - Frankie Laine / Tennessee Ernie Ford / Bing Crosby / Vaughn Monroe
97. G.I. Jive - Louis Jordan / Johnny Mercer
98. You Call Everybody Darlin' - Al Trace / Andrews Sisters / Anne Vincent
99. Maybe - Ink Spots
100. Der Fuehrer's Face - Spike Jones (Carl Grayson & Willie Spicer)

Artie Shaw's "My Heart Stood Still"

When Artie Shaw bought Tommy Dorsey's bus

The life of a big band musician, even in the top bands of the late 30's and early 40's, was anything but glamorous.
Food too often meant meals in greasy diners that announced via neon signs that they had "Good Eats" or many times simply sandwiches and beer back on the bus. The bus was the primary form of transportation, particularly due to the fact that very few bands were touring nationally. Most worked areas or regions such as New England, the Upper Midwest, California, etc.
When not sleeping on the bus during overnight journeys to the next play date or "gig" they would stay at hotels that were never of the "five star" variety.That was true for the white members of an inter-grated band....non-white members often had to stay in private homes or boarding houses with three or four per room.
Pay, was also, a major problem. It was never generous (Benny Goodman was notoriously "tight with a buck"). With this type of nomadic life it is not surprising to find alcholism, and drugs all too common.
 The quality and comfort of the band bus rose, naturally, with the commercial success of the band. My favorite bus story involves the early days of the Artie Shaw band. Money was tight and the bus leaked, but a savior appeared in the shape of Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey's band was getting national attention, particularly due to the popularity of the skinny boy vocalist that Tommy had hired  away from Harry James (more about the boy later). Flush with new found financial success, Tommy purchased a new bus. Artie Shaw jumped at the opportunity to buy Dorsey's bus. It took almost every penny he had....so much so that for many months after, the Artie Shaw band toured the North East in a bus that was still painted with the Tommy Dorsey name!
Listen to Artie Shaw's 1940 hit recording of Frenesi and view a list of the top song hits for that year by clicking http://memory-lane.org/TOPSONGSOF1940s.html

Artie Shaw buys a bus!

The life of a big band musician, even in the top bands of the late 30's and early 40's, was anything but glamorous.

Food too often meant meals in greasy diners that announced via neon signs that they had "Good Eats" or many times simply sandwiches and beer back on the bus. The bus was the primary form of transportation, particularly due to the fact that very few bands were touring nationally. Most worked areas or regions such as New England, the Upper Midwest, California, etc.

When not sleeping on the bus during overnight journeys to the next play date or "gig" they would stay at hotels that were never of the "five star" variety.That was true for the white members of an intergrated band....non-white members often had to stay in private homes or boarding houses with three or four per room.

Pay, was also, a major problem. It was never generous (Benny Goodman was notoriously "tight with a buck"). With this type of nomadic life it is not surprising to find alcholism, and drugs all too common.

The quality and comfort of the band bus rose, naturally, with the commercial success of the band. My favorite bus story involves the early days of the Artie Shaw band. Money was tight and the bus leaked, but a savior appeared in the shape of Tommy Dorsey. Dorsey's band was getting national attention, particularly due to the popularity of the skinny boy vocalist that Tommy had hired away from Harry James (more about the boy later).

Flush with new found financial success, Tommy purchased a new bus. Artie Shaw jumped at the opportunity to buy Dorsey's bus. It took almost every penny he had....so much so that for many months after, the Artie Shaw band toured the North East in a bus that was still painted with the Tommy Dorsey name!

Listen to Artie Shaw's 1940 hit recording of Frenesi and view a list of the top song hits for that year by clicking http://memory-lane.org/TOPSONGSOF1940s.html

Artie Shaw's 'Begin The Beguine' in the Grammy Hall of Fame

The Artie Shaw band recording of "Begin the Beguine" was the turning point in his musical life: Artie Shaw, like so many other band leaders, wanted to be famous, but unlike the rest, he hated everything about fame. Take "Begin the Beguine" one of his biggest hits, for example. It was such a big hit that he had to play it over and over to his chagrin.

So why is 'Begin the Beguine" one of the best records of the Swing Era? Because it is simply one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded. It's the perfectly sculpted fox trot tempo that coaxed people on the dance floor. It's also the crisp call and response between the reeds and horns and Shaw's sublime solo. In short, "Begin the Beguine" sums up all that was great about the Swing Era, all from a song that wasn't even supposed to be a big hit.


Cole Porter, the composer of "Beguine", wrote the song after a stop at Martinique on a cruise around the world. Porter heard the beguine rhythm and adopted it for a huge production number for his new musical Jubilee. At 108 bars, it was an extraordinarily long song. When Moss Hart heard it for the first time he said, "I thought it had ended when he was halfway through."

When it opened it 1935, Jubilee was a flop. However, "Beguine" was the one song that stuck out in reviewers minds. The Times for one found "hints of distant splendors" in the melody. Porter expected "Just One of Those Things," another song from the show to be a VERY big hit. (It had to wait for Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle)

However, by 1938 fans were asking Shaw if he knew how to play "Beguine," and Shaw asked his arranger Jerry Gray to come up with a chart for the popular tune. Gray's original version stuck with the beguine rhythm, but Shaw didn't feel it would work for the ballroom crowd. According to guitarist Al Avola, Shaw kept Gray's chords and changed it to a swinging four-four time called bending the Charleston." "We played it that night at the Roseland State Ballroom,"'Avola reported, and the first time we played it we could just feel the vibrations. We knew it was going to be big."

However, "Beguine" wasn't thought to be a big hit by the bigwigs at Bluebird, the record company Shaw had recently signed with. During that same year Shaw wanted it as a B side to "Indian Love Call," but recalled, "the recording manager thought it was a waste of time and only let me make it after I had argued it would make a nice quite contrast to ˜Indian Love Call."

It wasnt long before record buyers began to flip over the record to play the B side, and "Beguine" quickly overshadowed every hit from that year. It sold millions of copies, was featured on jukeboxes around the world and, as Shaw said, "that recording of that one little tune was the real turning point in my life."?