Of all of the major jazz orchestra leaders of the 1930s and ’40s, Artie Shaw undoubtedly led the most big bands, six during 1936-49. His underrated 1936-37 unit was too subtle and quiet to catch on but his 1937-39 outfit shot him to the top of the swing world. Shaw’s 1940-41 string orchestra was arguably his greatest band while his other groups (the 1941-42 unit with Hot Lips Page, the 1944-46 big band with Roy Eldridge, and his 1949 bop unit) all had their great moments.
The one Artie Shaw Orchestra that is never really written about is the Navy band that he led during 1942-43. Called Artie Shaw’s Rangers, Navy Band 501 only appeared on the radio once (two songs from the lone broadcast, “Nightmare” and “Begin The Beguine,” are all that survive), they made no recordings, and they were completely overshadowed by the success of Glenn Miller’s Army Air Force Band. Most summaries of Shaw’s life rarely give the Navy orchestra more than a cursory sentence or two because so little was known about them, until now.
Michael Doyle has certainly done his research and the result is the superlative hardcover book Nightmare In The Pacific (University of North Texas Press). None of the band members were alive to be interviewed but Doyle gathered together all of their published comments (including from Artie Shaw’s The Trouble With Cinderella and Max Kaminsky’s My Life In Jazz), Shaw’s medical file from the period, navy documents, mentions of the band from magazines and newspapers such as Downbeat, Metronome, and Variety, court records, a band history that was compiled by Harold. S. Kaye, and many other sources including reminiscences from members of the audience. The result is a very readable and valuable book that fills in an important gap in the Artie Shaw story.
Artie Shaw was always a complex character. One of the greatest clarinetists in jazz history, he was a perfectionist, an intellectual who was filled with contradictions, and an individual who was prone to irregular mood changes. Sometimes when faced with adversity he would bravely stand up for what he believed in, but at other times he would simply run away. While he generally treated his musicians well, his wives (there were eight of them) had to suffer through his erratic moods and beliefs.
In retrospect, Shaw’s decision after Pearl Harbor to break up his current orchestra and enlist in the Navy was a mistake. His celebrity status helped him gain permission to handpick his personnel and blaze new trails for a service jazz orchestra, predating Glenn Miller. But his inability to deal with some of the pressures and hardships resulted in him having a nervous breakdown in late-1943 and his discharge from the Navy, to the relief of all concerned.
Artie Shaw’s Navy Band 501 included such notable musicians as pianist Claude Thornhill (who soon departed to lead his own service group), trumpeters Max Kaminsky, Johnny Best and Conrad Gozzo, tenor-saxophonist Sam Donahue, and drummer Dave Tough. The exploits of Kaminsky and Tough add some humor to the book. The band’s story is traced through Shaw’s recruitment of the musicians and their periods in New York, California, Pearl Harbor, New Caledonia, Guadalcanal, New Zealand, and Australia. Their many concerts for service personnel did a great deal to uplift the soldiers’ spirits and give them a brief escape from the horrors of war. While the musicians were never directly involved in combat, they came close a few times, particularly in Guadalcanal where nightly bombings by the Japanese led to sleepless nights and Shaw’s mental deterioration.
In Nightmare In The Pacific, Michael Doyle pieces together all of the stories, separating fact from fiction. He gives the backgrounds of all of the musicians, discusses the events of the time and the conditions that the musicians experienced, and makes it possible to understand Artie Shaw a bit better. One also learns about what happened to Shaw’s sidemen after he departed. Sam Donahue took over the orchestra for the remainder of the war and the group (without Kaminsky and Tough who had already been discharged) made some recordings, allowing one a glimpse at how the orchestra must have sounded like when they performed on makeshift stages out in the Pacific.
Nightmare In The Pacific, available from untpress.umn.edu, makes for a fascinating read and is highly recommended.
Nightmare In The Pacific:
The World War II Saga Of Artie Shaw and His Navy Band
by Michael Doyle
University of North Texas Press
untpress.unt.edu
Hardback: 288 pages; $34.95
ISBN: 9781574419467
Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.
Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.
