The Art of Artie Shaw

Imagine if you can (I have a hard time doing so) a world in which an introverted nerd can bag eight wives, including Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Evelyn Keyes, and date the likes of Betty Grable, Judy Garland, and Lena Horne, strictly on the basis of being a clarinet player. But that was how it was during the big band era, fueled by radio and the Hollywood system, and among the bandleaders the one with the most star power was Artie Shaw (Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, 1910-2004). Granted, he was good looking, brilliant, and possessed of a certain dark charm. But still — clarinet player. Huh. That just doesn’t happen any more.

The son of Jewish immigrants, Shaw grew up in New Haven and was painfully shy as a kid. He took up the saxophone at age 12 in order to have some kind of social life and found that he excelled at it. Clarinet came a little later. By 16 he was touring as a professional musician. Throughout the late ’20s and early ’30s he worked as a session musician, and increasingly, an arranger. He played with Roger Wolf Kahn’s orchestra for a time, and then began forming his own bands in the mid ’30s. He had some four dozen top 20 hits between 1936 and 1946, including such well remembered recordings as his melancholy, lonely-sounding version of “Begin the Beguine” and the utterly gonzo “Nightmare” both in 1938. At various times his bands included Buddy Rich, Billie Holiday (when it was unheard for a black singer to front a white band), and Mel Torme.

Shaw became increasingly interested in sophisticated and experimental orchestrations, the “thinking man’s” bandleader, if you will, more interested in being listened to than danced to. This was absolutely the era when band geeks were king. As time went on, Shaw’s precocious curiosity took him all the way into the higher maths, leaving show business behind for the most part. He also loved literature. He published an autobiography, three novels, and several short stories. At the time of his death he left behind a 1,000 page unfinished manuscript for an autobiographical novel.

Shaw had his own CBS radio show from 1939 to 1940, co-hosted by Robert Benchley. That year he appeared as himself in the movie Dancing Co-Ed (1939) and appeared in several Vitaphone and Paramount shorts. In 1940 his band’s music was used throughout Second Chorus (1940) with Fred Astaire. He also has two Marx Brothers connections: He had a 1937 hit with “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm” from A Day at the Races; and he co-wrote the tune “If It’s You”, which was performed by Tony Martin in The Big Store (1941).

As Shaw grew increasingly aloof from pop culture in the post-war era, he nevertheless never can be said to have left show business entirely. He constantly scrapped bands, and started new ones. By the forties, his time between projects lengthened. But he still continued to make live appearances on occasion and to show up on tv variety shows, talk shows, game shows, and even dramatic series into the 1980s. There are a couple of notable documentaries about him, Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got (1985), and Artie Shaw: Quest for Perfection (2003).

In his personal life, Shaw was said to be possessive, controlling, and abusive, hence the epic matrimonial history. Keyes was the last one, and she lasted the longest, almost 30 years. He was 75 at the time of the split, she was nearly 70. Lord, he must have been a bastard!

For more on show business historyplease check out No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.