On the upcoming 100th anniversary of Artie Shaw's birth, Fresh Air remembers one of jazz's greatest clarinetists and big-band leaders with excerpts from a 1985 interview. In the 1930s and '40s, the ...

Artie Shaw (Avraham Ben-Yitzhak Arshawsky) (1910-2004), a jazz and popular music legend, was a clarinet virtuoso and one of the leading bandleaders of the 20th century. He organized and led several of ...

Artie Shaw's first feature-length film was Second Chorus, in 1940. By then, the 30-year-old clarinetist was earning up to $60,000 a week ($1.1 million in today's dollars), becoming the best-paid and ...

Speaking of Alec Wilder (yesterday's post), the composer may have had an inadvertent influence on Artie Shaw's decision to start his Gramercy Five combo in 1940. Forming small jazz groups within big ...

Artie Shaw, 94, the dynamic, cantankerous swing era icon who abruptly quit the music business in 1954, disappointed by the industry’s demand for dance music over the jazz innovation he championed, ...

Artie Shaw was born 100 years ago Sunday. He was a Swing Era sensation, a bandleader who lit a fire under a generation of jitterbuggers. He was also an outspoken, self-taught clarinetist who became a ...

In Eastern cities and towns last week, jitterbugs by the thousand laid their dollars on the line to hear a new dance band. The band belonged to dark, dapper, moody Clarinetist Artie Shaw, who two ...

Big Band leader and “Begin the Beguine” clarinetist Artie Shaw was eulogized by friends with tributes of admiration as well as moments of humor. Shaw’s music filled Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks ...

At his peak in the 1930s and ’40s, Shaw pulled in a five-figure salary per week and ranked with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller as the bandleaders who made music swing. At his peak in the ...

Artie Shaw (19102004) is the subject of Tom Nolan's biography, "Three Chords for Beauty's Sake," a compelling, day-to-day recap of a great musical talent. Shaw, a consummate artist, was bedeviled by ...

Artie Shaw, 94, the dynamic, cantankerous swing-era icon who abruptly quit the music business in 1954, disappointed by the industry's demand for pop tunes over the jazz innovation he championed, died ...