Re: Artie Shaw

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

For those whom it interests, NPR's Morning Edition on Friday, 3/8 had a 
segment with Artie Shaw (still very much alive and kicking at 91 or 2), 
which is not only available on the web (so they advised) but available in an 
expanded form.

Me, I was most impressed by his recounting his no-pain-but-gain picking up 
of--um, I mean, *being* picked up *by*--Ava Gardner.  Whom, of course, he 
married, along with Lana Turner and maybe some others.  (I realize this is 
not exactly hard-music-related.)

Shaw (who was Jewish and whose real/original name is mentioned in the 
segment) must have been just about a one-of-a-kind in *all* of show 
business, let alone music.  Just picked up his reed one day and went home; 
chucked it all, still at a peak of fame and fortune, and never looked back.  
Said good-bye to the "Artie Shaw business" is how he put it on NPR; he felt 
like he was playing a role--"Artie Shaw"--and not ... what?  Being himself?  
I dunno.  If he got tired of the "business," I wonder why he didn't just 
resume playing music with a small combo in clubs or something--he does seem 
to have genuinely loved making music.

Of course, you can do that when one of your compositions ("Begin the 
Beguine") has sold, cumulatively, some twenty *million* copies, I think the 
segment said, to date.

I really identified with one thing Shaw said about himself that *did*, 
maybe, play a role in his not doing the above:  viz., his unforgiving 
perfectionism.  (Of course, I also identified completely with his being 
picked up by Ava Gardner--could've been me!  Just too young!)

--Robert Cohen, whose sister has a friend named ... Artie Shaw.




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