Klarinet Archive - Posting 000155.txt from 2008/10
From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.org> Subj: Re: [kl] Moving away from Shep Fields to something really awful Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:23:14 -0400
From Wikipedia ...
"The sounds as of a dog in his dying anguish are from Ted Lewis' clarinet"
Dan Leeson wrote:
> Now it is time to move on to something particularly bad. It was a band
> from the 30s and early 40s managed by a clarinet player named "Ted
> Lewis." He came out with a top hat and tipping it to the audience, he
> would say, "Is Everybody Happy???" I always thought that the
> Dixieland clarinetist Frank Teschmacher had the ugliest sound of
> anyone I ever heard until I heard Ted Lewis. Shep Fields was like the
> NY Philharmonic next to Ted Lewis' band.
>
> Dan Leeson
> dnleeson@-----.net
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Hausmann"
> <bhausmann1@-----.net>
> To: <klarinet@-----.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 6:43 PM
> Subject: Re: [kl] Shep Fields (formerly "The spelling of the word:"
> (formerly "The Boy Friend"))
>
>> At 04:33 PM 10/28/2008, you wrote:
>>
>>> > This analysis plus the glorious one I did on "Shep Fields and His
>>> > Rippling
>>> > Rhythm" is without charge. In about a year when my book on the gran
>>> > Partitta is out, that will cost money. So read it for free here or
>>> pay > for
>>> > it in the future, at which point the young people of that era will
>>> > presume
>>> > that all of us were a bunch of idiots.
>>> >
>>>
>>> I have to say that the whole "Shep Fields" exchange has resulted in an
>>> unseemly amount of giggling on my part.
>>
>> Have any of you ever heard Shep Fields' OTHER band? His "Rippling
>> Rhythm" band really was the stuff of jokes, but for a time in the
>> 40's, he ditched that sound and created an entirely different band,
>> Shep Fields and his New Music. It consisted of ALL woodwind players
>> plus rhythm (no brass) doubling on a total of 35 instruments from
>> piccolo to bass sax, even an alto flute, and TEN clarinets (plus 3
>> bass clarinets). They made some really nice sounds, but of course,
>> during the war, it was very difficult to find doubling musicians who
>> could play the challenging book (and yes, he did employ Sid Ceasar
>> for a while). Besides, no accounting for taste, folks kept clammering
>> for his old rippling rhythm sound, so he gave up his musical group in
>> 1947 and made a good living playing rickey-tick instead. According to
>> George P. Simon, long time Metronome magazine writer and editor, and
>> author of "The Big Bands":
>>
>> "For Fields, who died in February, 1981, of a heart attack, his
>> fondest memories centered about that multi-reed band. With great
>> pride he noted that famed musical arranger and educator Joseph
>> Schillinger once described it as 'one of the most colorful bands ever
>> assembled. And for a guy who had sold corn almost all of his life,
>> that was certainly my biggest thrill!'"
>>
>> (See? Fields was in on the joke. He KNEW it was corn, but it was
>> LUCRATIVE corn, sort of like Kenny G.)
>>
>> Bill Hausmann
>>
>> If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!
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