Artie Shaw Gone at 94

[Tuckerfan]

He’d been ill for a number of years.

Bandleader and clarinetist Artie Shaw, famed for his recording of Begin the Beguine and one of the giants of the swing era of jazz, died Thursday at age 94, his manager Will Curtis said.

[Slithy_Tove]

It’s like with the Beatles: Ava Gardner’s husbands die in descending rank in coolness.

[kaylasdad99]

My modem at home is presently acting up, and I have just been cut loose from work for the weekend, so it is unlikely I will be able to participate much in the discussion. However, before I depart, I would like to take issue with any suggestion that Frank Sinatra was cooler that Artie Shaw.

[TV_time]

I first became aware of him when Laugh In used his name as a running gag. I listened one of his albums and found I like his music.

[Guinastasia]

And we suddenly know What heaven we’re in,
When they begin the beguine

I like to think he’s up there jamming with Bennie, Glenn, the Duke and all the others.

[gobear]

@Guinastasia

And we suddenly know What heaven we’re in,
When they begin the beguine

I like to think he’s up there jamming with Bennie, Glenn, the Duke and all the others.

Given his conduct over the past 94 years–from all reports he was a miserable son of a bitch in person–I don’t think “up there” is going to be seeing him.

[Ukulele_Ike]

@gobear

…from all reports he was a miserable son of a bitch in person…

Yeah, but I ain’t inviting him over to the house for dinner, just listening to his records. With great enjoyment.

His “Gramercy Five” sides from the mid-1940s were some amazing shit.

[kevja]

@Slithy Tove

It’s like with the Beatles: Ava Gardner’s husbands die in descending rank in coolness.

Who goes next? George C. Scott (or is he already gone?) or Micky Rooney?

McCartney or Starr?

[Tuckerfan]

@kevja

Who goes next? George C. Scott (or is he already gone?) or Micky Rooney?

McCartney or Starr?

Scott’s been gone for five years now. Mickey Rooney’s doing sleazy insurance commercials.

[NDP]

@Guinastasia

And we suddenly know What heaven we’re in,
When they begin the beguine

I like to think he’s up there jamming with Bennie, Glenn, the Duke and all the others.

I don’t know about that. For one thing, Shaw (who was also an outspoken atheist) often said he hated Glenn Miller and considered his music barely one step removed from Lawrence Welk-type schmaltz.

@gobear

Given his conduct over the past 94 years–from all reports he was a miserable son of a bitch in person–I don’t think “up there” is going to be seeing him.

The good always die young don’t they?

Anyway, maybe someone who knows more about the Big Bands can correct me, but wasn’t Shaw pretty much the last living bandleader from the Swing Era? His contemporaries like the Dorseys, Miller, Ellington, Basie, Goodman, and James have all been gone for a long time. If that is true, his death truly represents the passing of an era.

[Guinastasia]

@gobear

Given his conduct over the past 94 years–from all reports he was a miserable son of a bitch in person–I don’t think “up there” is going to be seeing him.

Hmmm…good point.

Still, to paraphrase, “If they’d got a Swing Heaven, you know they’ve got a hell of a band!”

[Governor_Quinn]

@NDP

Anyway, maybe someone who knows more about the Big Bands can correct me, but wasn’t Shaw pretty much the last living bandleader from the Swing Era?

Yes. The last of his living bandleading peers, Lionel Hampton, died in August of 2002.

Also, Shaw hated Glenn Miller’s guts, and, for that matter, I’m not sure I’ve ever read Shaw praising any of his fellow bandleaders.

kevja- George C. Scott was never married to Ava Gardner.

[Guinastasia]

All right then-he’s somewhere duking it out with Frank Sinatra and bitching because he’s a 94 year old crank. Better?

[Eve]

From the NYT:

. . . Mr. Shaw was was estranged from his two sons . . . We were, however, able to speak with Jonathan Shaw, who is 52 and lives in Rio de Janeiro. “My father was a deeply miserable human being,” Jonathan Shaw said in a telephone conversation yesterday. “That’s the side of him that most people who haven’t been closely associated with him don’t get to see. He was a genius, and he was also a very difficult man.”

“According to Artie’s version,” he went on, “when my brother first went to visit him, my father said, ‘What do you want? You’re nothing but a biological happenstance to me.’ He had said the same thing to me. I just made it difficult for him to dodge me.” Jonathan Shaw was estranged from his father for most of his life, he told us. Then, about two years ago, he made contact and spent a year with him. When Jonathan Shaw started having a relationship with his own son, he said, his father cut him off.

“I got to know him very well and we had some great times together,” Jonathan Shaw said, “but bottom line is that he was absolutely unable to maintain a relationship. He was abusive, condescending, mean-spirited. I felt it was to my advantage to maintain the relationship because it was in many ways cathartic, but no one with any self-respect will put up with that kind of abuse.” So he was not with his father when he died? “No,” Mr. Shaw said. “He died alone and miserable, as he chose to do.”

Yikes!