Klarinet Archive - Posting 000264.txt from 2004/01

From: "Lacy, Edwin" <el2@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] RE: Ellington's clarinetists
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 16:41:31 -0500

Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 11:14:23 +0000
To: klarinet@-----.org
From: Bob Davenport:

<<<In the Duke Ellington band, Jimmy Hamilton played Boehm but Russell
Procope played Albert.>>>

I wasn't aware that Procope played the Albert system, but don't doubt
it. However, Jimmy Hamilton was the clarinet star of the Ellington
band, which he joined in 1942. Even when Barney Bigard was doubling on
tenor and clarinet, he wasn't the kind of technician that Ellington felt
he needed in order to compete with the then-popular rage of clarinet
soloists with big bands. (Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Artie Shaw, and
others) It wasn't until he hired Jimmy Hamilton that he had a clarinet
soloist capable of almost any technical feat on the instrument. In my
opinion, Hamilton had another thing in common with Goodman, in that his
tone quality, when compared to the range of jazz clarinet sounds in
general, tended more toward the classical or "legit" tone.

Ed Lacy
University of Evansville

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