Artie Shaw

Sunday.

Artie Shaw died last Thursday - December 30th 2004 in Thousand Oaks, South California, aged 94.San Francisco Chronicle report

Artie Shaw made his final recordings in 1954 round about the time I was learning to play clarinet and I remember buying the sheet music for his Concerto for Clarinet and discovering his Gramercy Five recordings where he used Johnny Guarnieri on harpsichord.

I had been listening to the Benny Goodman small group recordings with Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton but I found Guarnieri's harpsichord sound on the Shaw recordings fascinating. My particular favourite was Special Delivery Stomp but all the Gramercy Five recordings were fine with me.

When my elder son was born we experimented with taped music to see what he liked to hear when he was in his cot and eventually it was obvious that he was happiest going off to sleep when The Gramercy Five tape was playing. I sometimes put it on when he comes back to visit but if the tracks register in his subconscious he never comments on it.

There's a page with lots of sound clips here and another one here courtesy of NPR.

A link to the Shaw band's theme tune, Nightmare, is embedded in the title to this blog.