| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
The Clarinet |
m |
||
|
|
|||
|
For the record mention will be made here of Mezz Mezzrow, the technical, melodic, rhythmic and harmonic nature of whose work were assessed with such devastating accuracy in an analysis by Andr6 Hodeir1 that it would be redundant to go into any further details.
Edmond Hall, though a jazz veteran, came late to recognition, having languished obscurely in unimportant big-band jobs until, at the age of 38, he was presented to a jazz-seeking audience as a member of Joe Sullivan's band at Cafe Society. Heard in the 1940s at the same club with Red Allen, Teddy Wilson and then with his own sextet, Hall later spent six years at Eddie Condon's club, playing in a style that proved most invigorating in a generally conventional setting of white Dixieland jazz. Hall has a sharp, reedy tone with a peculiar vibrato, a method of attacking the notes and a manner of phrasing that give his work the mark of complete originality. During the past couple of years fans in five continents have heard him with Louis Armstrong's peregrinating sextet.
The words "jazz" and "clarinet" became almost synonymous in the public mind when Benny Goodman, in 1935, became a national name. Though he had listened to Noone, Dodds and others, his style by now was unmistakably his own, making frequent use of the high register, in which his tone and control were of an unprecedented smoothness; of grace notes, variations in dynamics and contrasting uses of tension and relaxation that combined to give jazz one of the most imitated styles of the decade. Though today it may be possible to play (even for an audience of experienced musicians and thoroughly trained critics) a record by Peanuts Hucko, Sol Yaged, Johnny Mince or some other Goodman-inspired clarinetist and convince the listener that Goodman himself is playing, the agreeable musical atmosphere that these men can evoke owes everything to the style mat Goodman created*
Far less influential was Artie Shaw, whose peak of fame was reached in 1938. A master of the higher register, he brought to the clarinet a jazz style technically comparable with Goodman's, though sometimes accused of lacking the latters fire, and occasionally tending to sound mechanical. Shaw was at his best |
|||