The New Voyage of Discovery - The Clarinet

It was a great meeting last night. It’s always a pleasure to talk about educating the next generation of musicians, even if these are classical string musicians for the most part. I suppose getting the education first is important and hopefully some of them will realize that jazz is the truest path.

As I drove home along Hazelwood I was listening to a great album led by a man on a clarinet. The clarinet gets a bad rap and I haven’t written about it often here. If you were to ask ten jazz buffs their list of the Top Ten Jazz Musicians Of All Time (and you know we love making those kinds of lists), how many clarinetists would there be? Not many.

The exception would be those people who favour the old-time stuff. Woody Herman or Artie Shaw might make it. I like Woody best when he sings songs for hip lovers. The last clarinetist that was cool and hugely famous was probably Artie Shaw. He was a big star and was married to Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, though not at the same time. 

Not bad for a clarinetist

Last night it was neither Artie Shaw nor Woody Herman that was spinning, but Buddy DeFranco playing with the Oscar Peterson Quartet. This is a killer band, which doesn’t hurt, but Buddy holds his own with that legendary quartet.

Clarinet – Buddy De Franco

Piano – Oscar Peterson

Guitar – Herb Ellis

Bass – Ray Brown

Drums – Louis Bellson

The track that hit me as I drove those country roads was ‘PickYourself Up’. Yeah, I can hear you say that the title is appropriate given my current gloomy perspective. Buddy shows how it’s done on this track. Just trace his solo around the 5:50 mark and hear him piling phrase on phrase and Oscar and the band humming beneath him and you know you’re onto something special.

Maybe the clarinet should be our voyage of discovery for this new year. What do you say? Jimmy Giuffre anyone?