FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                    March 28, 2007

ARTIE SHAW ORCHESTRA TO TOP OFF CONCERT SERIES    

            The Artie Shaw orchestra is the final presentation of the Northwest Oklahoma Concert Series. The group will appear at 8 p.m., Wednesday, April 4, in Herod Hall Auditorium on the campus of Northwestern Oklahoma State University.

            Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students with appropriate ID. They are available at Holder Drug, Schuhmacher’s, Alva Chamber of Commerce and the Northwestern Bookstore.

            In the late 1930s, Artie Shaw and his orchestra became so popular that, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Time magazine reported that to the German masses, the United States meant “sky-scrapers, Clark Gable and Artie Shaw.”

            His name and music live today in the Artie Shaw Orchestra led by Dick Johnson, who Shaw described by saying, “Dick’s clarinet playing is the best I’ve heard, bar nobody.”

            Shaw was born in 1909 in New Haven, Conn., and learned to play the saxophone and clarinet when he was 14. A year later, he left home to play all over America and to study the work of his early jazz idols, Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Louis Armstrong.

            After several years, he settled in New York, becoming the top lead-alto sax and clarinet player in radio and recording studios. After a couple of years, he became disillusioned with the music business and bought some acreage with an old farmhouse in Bucks County, Pa. He moved there, trying to train himself as an author.

            In 1934, he returned to New York to resume his education, which he had abandoned when he left high school at age 15 and went back to studio work to support himself.

            Shaw made his first public appearance as a band leader in 1936 in a swing concert (history’s first) at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre. It proved to be a major turning point in his career as he chose a totally unorthodox way to fill one of  the interludes in front of the stage curtain while one of the headliners set up. Instead of the usual jazz group, he composed a piece of music for an octet consisting of a legitimate string quartet, a rhythm section and himself on clarinet. The audience was wildly enthusiastic.

            A short time after that, Shaw made a hit recording of “Begin the Beguine,” which he refered to as “a nice little tune from one of Cole Porter’s very few flop shows.” He hired Billie Holiday as his band vocalist (the first white band leader to employ a black female singer full-time). Within a year after the release of “Beguine,” the Artie Shaw Orchestra was earning as much as $60,000—the equivalent of more than $600,000 today.

            Shaw was catapulted into the ranks of top band leaders and immediately was dubbed the new “King of Swing.” Within a year, he abruptly took off for another respite from the music business, reemerging in early 1940 with a hit recording of “Frenesi.” Later that year, he formed a touring band with a good-sized string section, recording several smash hits, including “Star Dust,” “Moonglow,” “Dancing in the Dark” and “Concerto for Clarinet.”

            After Pearl Harbor, Shaw enlisted in the Navy and formed a service band that toured the forward Pacific war zones, playing as many as four shows a day. Eventually given a medical discharge for mental and physical exhaustion, he formed another civilian band in 1944.

            He continued his pattern of working a few years, then going on hiatus until he made his final musical appearance in 1954. Until his death on Dec. 30, 2004, Shaw had little to do directly with the music business. He did make a number of appearances on television and radio talk shows and lectured all over the United States. He conducted seminars on literature, art and the evolution of the Big Band Era at many colleges and universities.

            As demonstration of his wide-ranging interests, his personal library contained more than 15,000 volumes, he was a nationally ranked precision marksman, an expert fly-fisherman and he worked for two decades on a fictional trilogy dealing with the life of a young jazz musician.

            Shaw’s own life was the subject of a feature-length documentary by a Canadian filmmaker, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got.

            In 1983, Shaw gave his name and blessing to the formation of the current touring orchestra led by Johnson.

            Johnson grew up idolizing Artie Shaw and his first big band record purchase was “Concerto for Clarinet.” He said that fronting the orchestra was the culmination of a life-long dream and his goal is to truly recreate the inimitable Shaw style.

            The Northwest Oklahoma Concert Series is made possible with the assistance of the Oklahoma Arts Council, the National Endowment for Fine Arts, Mid-America Arts Alliance and the Share Trust of Alva.

-NW-

Back to News Page