 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: rtmyth
Date: 2014-11-17 05:30
I remember him playing in the 1950s with Welk. I retired, with overwhelming approval of my family and dog, when I was 80.
richard smith
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2014-11-17 06:25
Fine playing!
When he finishes "You Brought A New Kind Of Love To Me" at around 6:24, all the band members pull out pencils and write on their parts. Any idea what they're writing?
Ken Shaw
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Author: ned
Date: 2014-11-17 08:11
Apart from Pete being American and Acker (R.I.P.) being British, there's not much between them really.
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Author: Clarineteer
Date: 2014-11-17 10:58
I remember watching an old Lawrence Welk show that included Pete on clarinet and all of a sudden the camera panned around and there was Pete looking very bored. That made me chuckle.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2014-11-17 19:52
Maybe the finest nightclub clarinetist ever.
The man knew how to shape a mood, lift peoples' spirits, give them something of depth...all at the same time.
I'll always be grateful for the kindness he showed me when I was a teenager--and I still learn from his recordings.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: William
Date: 2014-11-17 20:50
I remember seeing Pete's first Welk appearance and from that show on, I tuned in every Sat. eve just to catch his playing. Welk had the best live band on television at that time, and was lucky enough to have his son introduce Pete and put him on the air. The rest was "luck" for all of us wannabe jazz clarinetist's to hear and try to emulate. There were very good jazz clarinets around--of note, my good friend, Chuck Hedges from Milwaukee--who could play like Pete, but few had the TV exposure that Welk provided for Pete. So, thanks to Lawence Welk for that and thanks to Pete for "hanging in there" so we could all get to know him and hear him play his clarinet.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2014-11-17 22:02
Excellent points, William. And regardless of the negative jazz criticism of Welk, Pete remained humbly grateful towards him for such an opportunity.
btw, I was at a gig recently here in Cleveland, when between sets they pumped some canned music...and it was an incredible jazz clarinetist I'd never heard before. All of us were trying to guess who it was, but none of us could peg it, so we went up and asked the bartender. He grabbed the cd case, checked and said
"Chuck Hedges."
We were all impressed.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: TomS
Date: 2014-11-17 22:19
Pete was much more than a Dixieland clarinet player. If you really want to hear what an amazing clarinetist Pete was, listen to the album "Plenty of Pete". It was released on the Coral label back in the early 1960s and produced by Charles "Bud" Dant. It features a quartet, consisting of drums, bass, vibraphone and of course, clarinet.
Peter Dewey Fountain Jr. had an unusually rich, centered and expressive sound, excellent technique, a perfect ear for improvisation and flawless execution.
When I first started attempting to play clarinet, I'd visit the local music store once a week to see if any new Pete Fountain albums were available. I am still a fan, although I haven't purchased any of his recordings in a while ...
Tom
Post Edited (2014-11-18 04:37)
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Author: BobD
Date: 2014-11-19 03:14
I had previously read that Pete lost all or most of his clarinets in the New Orleans Hurricane. Anybody know anything about that?
Bob Draznik
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Author: TomS
Date: 2014-11-20 06:20
Haven't heard that.
Pete played a special "big bore" Leblanc model bearing his name. Seems these were a full Boehm system minus the low E-flat.
I think these have been out of production for a long time, so they would be very difficult to replace. They sure were pretty!
I wish we could still buy new Leblanc LLs ... I loved the key work and feel on these instruments.
Tom
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Author: allencole
Date: 2014-11-20 09:13
I always enjoyed the album "New Orleans All-Stars", where he shared clarinet duties with Pee Wee Spitalera and Harry Shields. Was a great sampler to the style, and had an announcer which provided some handy narration.
Jammed endlessly to it, and the Benny Goodman Sextet when I was a kid.
Allen Cole
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Author: mk
Date: 2014-11-25 04:19
maybe those crystal mouthpieces might come floating to shore someday...or does glass not float....hmmm...could be a problem...lol
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-11-25 05:42
I remember when Pete Fountain wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses and played an O'Brien clarinet. He used to play with the trumpeter George Girard at a restaurant/bar in New Orleans on Canal Blvd called Lenfants that was replaced by an office building for one of the large cemeteries. He got his first crystal mouthpiece from one of his clarinet idols, Irving Fazola.
When Fountain first went with Laurence Welk, he still had the horn rimmed glasses and was playing either an O'Brien or Selmer big bore clarinet. Welk, of course, made him wear contact lens and a toupee. The Leblanc company quickly switched him to one of their models, in line with the theory of Leon Leblanc and his acoustician Charles Houvenaghel that the clarinet ought to be played with a relaxed, open throat and little pressure on the reed. Both the medium large LL and the Dynamic H models were designed to make this easier, and Fountain played them both with Welk's band and after leaving them. The Dynamic H morphed into the Big Easy model with gold keys but it was still basically Houvenaghel's design.
Fountain could play anything he or anyone else could hum. He had a great sense of melody and his improvisations never sound like sterile mechanical exercises the way some others often do. He intuitively understood the ideal of tone production that Leon Leblanc and Houvenghel were building into their design and added a warm vibrato that is unique and seldom sounds overdone.
He always used very soft reeds (under #2) on a medium-open mouthpiece and almost never missed a note or squeaked. Watch him closely on any of his videos and you will see no sign of muscle tension in the embouchure, just a fluid natural flowing means of production with no tightness anywhere.
Leon Leblanc and Houvenaghel probably wanted to see such a relaxed approach to sound production on their clarinet designs adopted by classical players, but it was a natural-born jazz player--Pete Fountain--who brought their ideas to fruition.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2014-12-02 21:15
Interesting ideas, seabreeze. I think you're probably right about the whole Leblanc sound concept. Pete certainly realized an approach to the clarinet that few have matched.
As far as his set-up, he told me he used #2 1/2 strength reeds, though that was 25 years ago.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: seabreeze
Date: 2014-12-04 06:08
I've always found it interesting that Buddy DeFranco also liked the Leblanc LL but then moved on to a Yamaha model rather than the big bore Dynamic H.
Other clarinetists, such as Jerome Stowell in Chicago, Hymie Voxman in Iowa, and jazz players Gus Bivona and Don Bonnee played the Dynamic for a while but Fountain really made it his own, melding with it to produce a signature big bore sound distinctly different from that of a Boosey and Hawkes or Selmer BT and Centertone.
Post Edited (2014-12-04 20:32)
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Author: RussM
Date: 2014-12-04 07:39
Pete Fountain was an endorser for Leblanc, and when they changed over from the Model 1611 to the “Big Easy” model 1612, Pete had his business manager (and son-in-law) Benny Harrell sell off his 1611’s. One of them was purchased (in 1999) by a professional musician in Bellingham, WA, who in turn sold it to me in 2006. I was delighted to be able to acquire this instrument, as I knew it had been hand selected by Pete Fountain himself. It has gold plated keys in an 18/7 key configuration ( forked Eb-Bb, articulated C#-G# ). It came with a certificate of authenticity signed by Pete Fountain. This was one of the clarinets he used when he had his club at the New Orleans Hilton. I purchased a Woodwind Pete Fountain model 2515-L3 crystal mouthpiece from a dealer, and liked to use it with Mitchell Lurie # 3 reeds.
[ edited - GBK ]
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Author: hinotehud ★2017
Date: 2014-12-04 17:46
This website explains why Pete Fountain and Lawrence Welk parted ways. "He wasn't able to play enough of the jazz that he loved, and he never felt comfortable performing on camera....The breaking point came during a Christmas program, when Fountain performed "Silver Bells" in an improvised jazz style without Welk's permission. Soon after, Fountain left the show...."
http://www.knowla.org/entry/715/
Post Edited (2014-12-06 06:21)
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