clarinet

[Bert Stratton <yiddcup...>]

Clarinet is harder to play than the sax.  Granted.  But it's not a world
apart.  (Though the clarinet is "the agony stick," to quote Chip Stephens,
jazz pianist, who said he heard that expression while touring with a recent
version of the Woody Herman band.)
 
The clarinet, the instrument, is not a limitation.  Classical clarinetist
Bob Hill told me, "There's nothing, technically speaking, that would
surprise me anymore on clarinet."  

Now clarinet -- klezmer aside -- is generally out of fashion. So are
fedoras, which are kind of snazzy.   "Snazzy" -- the word -- is out of
fashion . . .

These fads come and go. Why?  People -- consumers -- get sick of the same
old thing and will pay to hear something new.   For example, the 1950s "bar
mitzvah tenor sax" -- to quote Sokolow --  was replaced by the alto, due to
jazz' influence.   Parker and Adderly supplanted the older tenor players.     

I read (in John Hammond's autobio?) the clarinet was one of the best
selling instruments during the Shaw/Goodman era. These days if you go to a
middle school, the reeds are predominately saxophones. 

'Nother thing: more people can afford saxophones now. 

A lot of musical-instrument fashions come from pop culture.  I remember
when Blood, Sweat and Tears' horn section poked a small hole in the rock
guitar wall.  Some of us thought the wall would crumble.  Hasn't yet.

-Bert Stratton
http://www.yiddishecup.com 





At 11:24 PM 2/28/01 -0600, you wrote:
>Responding to the message of <3A9DCFE9(dot)816A2981 (at) concentric(dot)net>
>from jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org:
>> 
>> This raises an interesting question -- several really -- that I'd love
>> to hear the clarinetists address.
>> 
>> Why is the instrument held in such disrepute? Lester Young doubled on
>> clarinet when he first came to Count Basie; Basie told him to lose the
>> clarinet, that the instrument had no future in big-band-driven jazz. And
>> when bop came to the fore, it drove out most of the clarinetists
>> (despite Buddy DeFranco making a more than game effort to play bop
>> clarinet). Remember, before bebop came along, you had several major
>> leaders who played clarinet -- Goodman, Shaw, Herman (two Jews, by the
>> way).
>> 
>> So what gives?
>
>My understanding is that the intricacies of fingering the clarinet, which 
>overblows at the twelfth, made playing highly chromatic bebop difficult
and that
>that was the principal reason sax, which overblows at the octave, largely 
>supplanted it.  This may also be the reason that there were relatively few 
>trombonists appearing as bop soloists, the recently departed J. J. Johnson a 
>notable exception.  I'm not a wind player so I can't vouch for this from 
>personal experience.
>
>
>
>Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
>Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music
>Adjunct Professor of American Studies
>University of Minnesota
>2106 4th St. S
>Minneapolis, MN 55455
>612 624-7840 612 624-8001 (fax)
>

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