Klarinet Archive - Posting 000305.txt from 2004/01

From: Bob Davenport <bob@-----.freeserve.co.uk>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: Ellington's clarinetists
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 04:36:27 -0500

>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 =8A 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.

According to an article in, I think, the December issue of Jazz Journal
International, someone at a party once asked Jack Brymer what he thought of
Benny Goodman. Brymer replied that he was a fan of Goodman, Artie Shaw and
Woody Herman, and took out his clarinet and impersonated all three of them.
But he said that the jazz clarinest he most admired was Jimmy Hamilton.
Hamilton himself said, 'Often, like in [Ellington's] Chinoiserie, my part
virtually demanded a legitimate technique. There are ... some things that
came to me - like cadenzas - I couldn't have done if I hadn't had a
legitimate-type training' (Stanley Dance, The World of Duke Ellington
(London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 138).

Bob Davenport

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org