Bandleader Shaw Is Back in the Swing

Artie Shaw sits in a large, cluttered studio on the second floor of his Newbury Park home. Behind him, around him, stacked on shelves, tables and chairs, overflowing onto the floor, is a bewildering array of books--some 10,000 according to him. Nearby are keyboard instruments, a recording machine and a variety of audio electronics.

Nowhere is there a clarinet.

Forty-plus years after Shaw--by all estimates one of the finest clarinetists in jazz history--laid down the instrument that had been his vehicle to national prominence as a superstar swing bandleader, he no longer gives it much thought.

“There’s a trait I have, and I guess it’s a bad one, but it’s all I can do,” he says. “I cannot do more than one thing at a time. I can think very clearly about one thing--focus on it--and that’s it.”

Since the ‘50s, his primary focus has been on writing words rather than music. When he decided to pack up his clarinet for good in 1954, his attention turned to writing and to the active continuation of a rigorous lifetime pursuit of knowledge. He has since published an autobiography, “The Trouble With Cinderella,” and two collections of stories, “I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead” and “The Best of Intentions and Other Stories.”

In the intervening years, he has been asked, again and again, how he could abandon both his instrument and his primary profession. His answer has always been succinct.

“‘Look--I never studied clarinet. I studied with the guy next to me. When I knew more than he did, I moved on. Finally I ran out of guys.

“I picked up a horn because I wanted to play, and be with the pretty girls and the pretty lights, and have the cars and all that red-blooded American stuff. Then, as I got older, you know, beware of what you wish for. It happened, I found out there was too much of muchness, so I got out. And then I stopped. That’s my story there.”

Nor was leading a string of first-rate bands, and recording such major Swing-era hits as “Begin the Beguine,” “Frenesi” and “Stardust” enough for Shaw, either.

“I’ve said it 50 times--the corset got too tight,” he says. “You want to do more and they won’t let you, they won’t support it. And in my business, it’s not like being a painter; you’re not just buying canvas and stretchers. You’re having to pay men, and you can’t wait 40 years to wait to pay them.

“The last records I did I hired five guys that I thought were very good, the very best that I could get. Well, it took 40 years for the records to get out. Nobody wanted to release them. They all said, ‘Oh this is great stuff, but there’s no audience.’ If there’s no audience, you’ve got to leave.”

The albums, finally released a few years ago on Music Masters as “The Last Recordings,” are Shaw’s last offering as a jazz clarinetist. The quality of his playing underscores that his decision to give up music while in his prime deprived the jazz world of a creative voice that still had much to say.

Shaw, 88, insists he will never play the clarinet again, but he has been drawn out of his book-packed aerie occasionally to lead ensembles playing restored orchestrations of his music. In the early ‘80s, an Artie Shaw band, featuring clarinetist Dick Johnson, began touring with his blessing.

Saturday night at the Wilshire Theatre, Shaw will make an intriguing return to action as part of the four-day “Modern Sounds: A Big Band Celebration of the Great Jazz Arrangers,” leading an all-star band in a performance featuring some of his lesser-known music.

“I’m calling it a retrospective,” he says. “Artists have retrospectives; why shouldn’t musicians?”

Some of the pieces on the bill are early examples of Shaw’s own arrangements, written at a time when he was still establishing his style. They should provide some unusual insights into the role he played as a leader and an arranger in developing the conceptual flow that moved through his ensembles.

“I’m going to do about four or five pieces which will take people back to the late ‘30s,” he explains. “The second part will be the pre-war string band. I’ve got it transcribed so that other instruments play the string section stuff. It’s not quite the same coloration, but it’ll work. And the third section is from the post-war band, not well-known but some good things there.”

In addition to Shaw’s return to conducting a band--his first such outing in 15 years--the “Modern Sounds” program lists numerous other events, most at the Queen Mary Hotel. There will be panel discussions and appearances of orchestras led by Louis Bellson, Jack Sheldon, Les Brown and others. Programs also will be devoted to the music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford and Don Ellis.

But the Shaw concert is clearly the high point of the celebration.

“I hope what people will get is a sense of why I was always trying different things,” says Shaw.

“You can’t tell where you’re going to go, where you’re going to end up. . . . So when people ask me, ‘Why did you do that?,’ the only answer is, ‘It seemed like a pretty good idea at the time.’ ”

Shaw pauses for a thoughtful moment amid this rush of ideas and images. It’s been more than half a century since he was a star of the Swing Age, an elegant if occasionally quixotic figure whose highly publicized seven marriages included alliances with actresses Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Evelyn Keyes. But his life, for the past two decades, has been far more reclusive, limited primarily to books and ideas that surround him.

“You know,” he says, “when I moved out here more than 20 years ago, there wasn’t anything around me. But that’s OK. There’s always a new challenge. You know, when you’ve been in Who’s Who for more than 50 years, they ask you to give them an epitaph. When they asked me a few years ago, I said, off the top of my head, ‘He did the best he could with the material at hand.’ ”

In typically spirited fashion, however, Shaw recently modified the epitaph to make it “shorter and more elegant,” he says. “I’ve cut it down to two words: Go away.”

BE THERE

“The Music of Artie Shaw,” conducted by Artie Shaw, featuring Don Shelton. Wilshire Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills; Saturday, 8:30 p.m. $20, $35, $50.

“Modern Sounds: A Big Band Celebration of the Great Jazz Arrangers.” Today-Sunday, Queen Mary Hotel, 1126 Queens Highway, Long Beach. Concerts, panel discussions 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Individual events (except for Shaw program) $8-$25. Registration fee for entire celebration, $300. (562) 985-7072.