Artie Shaw
Self Portrait (Bluebird/BMG) Three things make Self Portrait worthy and important. The 5-CD retrospective of Artie Shaw gathers cuts from several labels that released the clarinetist-bandleader’s oeuvre before the swing king hung up his horn and baton for good in 1954. Better yet, Shaw himself picked the nearly 100 tunes, choosing energetic live recordings over safer studio renditions. The most important reason Self Portrait is such a first-rate anthology is simply because the music within shines and shimmies like a jazz dance on a moonlit sea. Shaw excelled during the Swing Era, with tracks here covering 1936-1954. At that time, big bands ruled the roost as the sonic engine for dances as well as the popular entertainment. At the time, Shaw was big, commanding the equivalent of a half-million dollars a week. Self Portrait shows why. Shaw’s horn handiwork is so palpable in “Two in One Blues” and “Concerto for Clarinet” that you can almost smell the clarinet smoke from the klezmer fire ignited. “Summertime” reaches orchestrated elegance, with instruments beaming like different pedals on the same rose, while Count Basie’s “The Glider” swings heavy as it smolders. Most are instrumental tracks, with notable exceptions like Leo Watson’s from-the-heart singing on “Shoot the Likker to Me, John Boy,” and Texan Hot Lips Page on “Take Your Shoes Off, Baby.” There’s also fine cameos by Buddy Rich, Billie Holiday, and Roy Eldridge, among others. Perhaps the best is collection opener and a de facto Shaw theme, “Nightmare” — moody, bluesy, and scary all at the same time. Great care has gone into remastering the original recordings, though some come from acetate discs, and occasionally this shows. Yet to evaluate these recordings with digital hindsight is to place perfection over performance: these subtle glitches don’t mar an outstanding collection by one of the 20th century’s overlooked musical titans. With a legacy that big, the romantic, powerful, and entertaining Self Portrait lives up to the task. And then some. This is history, written in sound.
This article appears in December 7 • 2001.