3 Victor Artists Who Made The Clarinet Cool
By Samantha Ferrara
While you may have bullied your school’s band geek for being a talented clarinet player, the clarinet is actually among the most versatile and commercially-used instruments - which makes it one of the coolest.
Although the clarinet was created for orchestral use, the growth and development of jazz in the first half of the twentieth century created new opportunity for the clarinet and its players.
Amongst some of the most popular jazz clarinetists, even to this day, are Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Sidney Bechet. As history would have it, all three of these jazz clarinetists were signed to Victor Records and made their most popular recordings on the Victor label.
Your school’s band geek might not have been as cool as these players, but that’s only because Shaw, Goodman, and Bechet set the bar pretty high. As pioneers of the jazz genre and innovators on the clarinet, all three musicians are revered as jazz icons and staples on the Victor Label
1910-2004
Artie Shaw, a popular clarinetist and bandleader from Connecticut, began as a saxophone player and did not pick up the clarinet until his teen years. As the Swing Era flourished, Shaw was eager to form a jazz ensemble to perform some of his original compositions. He attracted his initial fan-base because of the unique makeup of his jazz ensemble - complete with a string quartet, and, of course, a clarinet.
During WWII, Shaw enlisted in the Navy and entertained those with whom he shared his deployment. He continued to experiment with jazz upon his return home but retired from the clarinet in the 1950s to pursue a writing career.
Having been signed to the Victor label from 1938 until 1942, Shaw recorded jazz hits such as “Begin The Beguine,” “Stardust,” and “Frenesi.”
Despite Artie Shaw being notoriously difficult to work with, well-known jazz musicians such as Buddy Rich, Billie Holiday, and Mel Tormé performed and recorded with Shaw, and his clarinet playing lives on as part of Victor’s legacy.
As a clarinet player during the Swing Era, Shaw inevitably competed with clarinet player, bandleader, and Victor artist Benny Goodman.
1909-1986
Born in Chicago, and beginning his career as a clarinet prodigy, Benny Goodman has long-been revered the greatest jazz clarinetist of all time and has earned the nickname “The King of Swing.”
Goodman began performing professionally before reaching his teen years and would go on to work with a few different jazz groups before forming his own in 1934.
On August 21, 1935, Goodman and his band - featuring stars like Harry James and Gene Krupa - began a string of performances at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. These performances, met with enthusiastic dancing, are often referenced as giving birth to the Swing Era where Goodman would compete with Artie Shaw for the top clarinet-playing-band-leader position.
Signed to Victor Records between 1928 and 1941, Benny Goodman recording Louis Prima’s hit song “Sing Sing Sing,” which would become one of Goodman’s most well-known recordings, as well as songs such as “Stomping At The Savoy” and “Bugle Call Rag.”
Benny Goodman is credited with changing the direction of jazz. Although he could not keep up once the Swing Era morphed into bebop, Goodman remains one of the most influential jazz musicians of all time and a staple in the Victor catalogue.
1897-1959
While the start of Sidney Bechet’s career predated Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman, his contributions to jazz are just as important.
As a multi-instrumentalist, Bechet had a working knowledge of many of the instruments that could be found in his childhood home. However, Bechet focussed on the clarinet and, later, the soprano saxophone.
Fueled by the music of his hometown - New Orleans, LA - Bechet mastered the art of improvisation and collaborated with musicians like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
Because of Sidney Bechet’s early exposure to many different instruments, and his ability to play them, he revolutionized the overdubbing process at Victor Records. In 1941, while signed to the label, Bechet played and recorded all of the instruments on his version of “The Sheik of Araby.”
Bechet, unlike Shaw and Goodman, was equally recognized for his ability to play two different instruments - clarinet and soprano saxophone. In addition to pioneering jazz improvisation and the use of clarinet in jazz, Bechet revolutionized the overdubbing recording process for Victor and remains an icon of the jazz genre.
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