To say that Artie Shaw (1910-2004) was a unique individual would be an understatement. A perfectionist who mastered the clarinet, Shaw treated his musicians well but was quite difficult to live with, as his eight wives would attest! An intellectual who personality-wise was a bit out of place during the Swing era, he was full of contradictions. While Shaw consistently ran away from public acclaim (which found him anyway) and he talked regularly about art for art’s sake, he also enjoyed being the center of attention.
Yet despite his fame and the lucrative nature of his career, he was active in music for less than three decades. Shaw permanently gave up playing the clarinet late in 1954 when he was only 44 because he felt that he had nothing left to say, and also because he was a bit dismayed at the lack of acclaim he received with the final version of the Gramercy Five. Shaw spent his last half-century engaging in various pursuits including trying to be an author while he was regularly questioned about why he had stopped playing music.
Barnett Singer, who wrote the bulk of Icon of Swing while valuable insights were supplied by Jesse Read, has long been a big Artie Shaw fan, particularly loving his orchestra of 1938-39. Around 1977, he summoned up the courage to phone his idol. To his surprise, Shaw was willing to talk and for the next seven years they chatted on the phone on a month
