Klarinet Archive - Posting 000610.txt from 2002/11

From: Daniel Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Dark Sound - Famous Players
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 23:57:18 -0500

Gary Truesdail wrote:
> While on the subject of trying to describe the tone quality of our
> favorite instrument and players thereof, I would like to hear a
> description of the tone quality of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw or other
> famous comparable jazz and big band clarinetists, and other legit
> players (lets not argue about the meaning of legit). The descriptions
> must come from a listener who heard the player in a live performance.
> You can reply any way you please but I think it would be interesting if
> you could name the performer and use a single word or less than five
> words (adjectives referring to tone quality) per performer that would
> describe the tone. I think it might show that all of us already have a
> mutual understanding of the extremely imprecise words we currently use.
>
> Do not get me wrong, I am not trying to quell the current debate
> regarding "tone" for such debates are necessary to push the borders of
> extremes to new depths.
>
> Gary T

I heard both Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, and even Woody Herman live many
times. I played a concert on which Goodman was soloist in the Weber 1st
concerto and chatted with him on several occasions

Both Shaw and Herman produced ugly, unpleasant sounds, Herman more than
Shaw. I don't think that either of them spent much time in their
formative years thinking about the matter of sound. Neither, for that
matter, did Edmund Hall, Peanuts Hucko, or Frank Teschmacher.

Herman played on a white mouthpiece with a black patch and I bought one
just like it in hopes that I would play jazz like him. I was so stupid
that I thought the jazz quality came from the mouthpiece. If Herman's
mouthpiece was anything like mine, it is not surprising that he produced
such an unpleasant sound. The mouthpiece cost $8.00 and it was made by
Brillhart. They had only one facing: rotten.

Shaw, had poor breath and diaphragm control when he played softly so his
sound was not atypical of what one heard from jazz players. It was all
breath and hiss. When he played loudly, it was generally amplified and
that distored the sound character even further.

Goodman was serious about his sound and he kept changing things to make
it better. It was always a new mouthpiece or reed and very frequently a
new clarinet. It was not an unpleasant sound but it was noticeably
different from the sound character achieved by the better classical
artists. When Goodman studied with Kell, it was for the purpose of
improving his sound and, in my opinion, he was not successful. His
recording of the Mozart concerto and quintet are made unpalatable
because of the sound character of his classical playing was so
noticeably different from others who recorded and played those same works.

Bottom line is that all three players of my youth did not have sounds
that I wanted to emulate, ranging from ugly and discordant, to
acceptable for the sphere in which they worked. To be blunt, no one
cared about sound character except when it came to the legitimate
player. Ed Hall had the worst, ugliest, dirtiest sound I ever heard and
he was a great jazz player, though sometimes it was hard to believe that
he was playing a clarinet. That's how uncharacteristic it was, even
though no one really cared that much how ugly his sound was.

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**Dan Leeson **
**leeson0@-----.net **
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