Albums: Begin the Beguine, Arties Shaw Anthology, 1938-39 Old Gold Shows

Arthur Arshawsky (23 May 1910 – 30 December 2004), better known as Artie Shaw, was an accomplished jazz alto saxophonist,clarinetist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and author. He was born in New York City, and began learning the saxophone when he was 15 and by age 16, had begun to tour with a band. He returned to New York and became a session musician.

Through 1949, he led five separate big bands that were all extremely popular -save the last, with its be-bop oriented book. Ironically, that final Shaw-led big band is considered by most jazz critics to have been Artie's best. With time out to lead a Navy service band during WWII, Shaw's band leading career lasted less than a decade overall - yet it was a remarkably productive one, populated with more than a dozen "Gold" records.

These included such mega-hits as "Begin the Beguine", "Stardust", "Frenesi", "Moonglow", "Temptation", "Dancing In The Dark" and "Summit Ridge Drive" -the latter by his famous quintet billed as the Gramercy 5. Shaw was known for being an innovator in the big band idiom, pioneering strings with jazz and using unusual instrumentations. His 1936 piece "Interlude in B-flat" was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed third stream.

In 1938 he hired Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist, becoming the first white bandleader to hire a full-time black female singer. This 1938-1939 orchestra became phenomenonally successful and appeared in the movie "Dancing Co-ed" which included one of his future wives, Lana Turner, in the cast. Artie's clarinet playing, dismissed as a bit stiff at first, now easily rivaled that of Benny Goodman.

Longtime Duke Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard--himself a talented musician--cited Shaw as his favorite clarinet player. An entirely new orchestra, with full string section was organized in the Summer of 1940 and lasted to mid-1941 featuring Billy Butterfield, Johnny Guarneiri, Nick Fatool and Ray Conniff as principal arranger. This outfit can be prominently seen in the RKO film "Second Chorus" starring Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard.

The final pre-war Shaw band had Davey Tough and Hot Lips Page and a big hit on St. James Infirmary Blues. Artie broke this outstanding unit up shortly after Pearl Harbor so he could "enlist" in the Navy -refusing an offered commission.

Back from the Navy, Shaw put together a new band that featured Roy Eldridge and an ambitious library stocked with arrangements by Eddie Sauter, Buster Harding, Ray Conniff and others. Hit records for this band included "Little Jazz" and "S'Wonderful" and Artie was now married to Ava Gardner.

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