Klarinet Archive - Posting 000279.txt from 2004/01

From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?ferengiz=E2de_dani=EAl_shawqy?= <rab@-----.de>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Ellington's clarinetists/Boehm vs. Albert/Mueller
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 08:16:02 -0500

Hi there,
I would rank Bigard as the ultimately superiour jazz clarinettist, in all
respects including dexterity, range, smoothness etc. Hamilton replaced him
as clarinet soloist after Bigard had left. But as Hamilton's sound was
comparably thin (boehm system...) Procope and Carney had to fill in on their
Albert horns in pieces like Mood Indigo.
BTW. I play Albert and German system (the latter preferably not full Oehler
but simpler old F.A. Uebel for Jazz) because I favour the more profound,
woody sound. My Jacques Albert is much more akin to old German Instruments
than any Boehm instrument I have seen. B&Hawkes had a fairly good sound for
Boehm instruments, yet still inferior to good older German instruments (we
made some blindfold tests, everybody agreed right away...). Mind you I
started off on Boehm system and changed much later IN SPITE of my rather
germanophobic general attitude.
Best wishes,
danyel franke,
Frankfurt Germany
----- Original Message -----
From: Lacy, Edwin
To: klarinet@-----.org
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 10:38 PM
Subject: [kl] RE: Ellington's clarinetists

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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