Author: seabreeze
Date: 2016-07-11 17:15
Of course, jazz didn't begin or end with Shaw, Goodman and Cuesta. Pete Fountain and Buddy DeFranco both played LeBlancs for most of their careers, with DeFranco eventually switching to Yamaha. Andy Firth and Felix Peikli play Buffets, Eddie Daniels played Buffets for a long time and now plays Backuns. Andy Miles plays both jazz and classical on the same German Oehler system clarinet, and Michael White plays traditional New Orleans jazz on a Wurlitzer Reform Boehm clarinet. Goodman switched from Selmer to Buffet late in his career and still played jazz. Shaw played Selmer and Conn big bore instruments but later used a smaller bore Buffet on the Grammercy Five recordings. Most of the early New Orleans jazz players played Albert system instruments, some Selmer, some Buffet, some other brands (including George Lewis's metal Pedler, though he later switched to a wood Selmer). Today, Evan Christopher plays tradition-influenced jazz on a Selmer Albert system clarinet.
What to conclude from all this? Jazz can obviously be played on just about any clarinet of decent design that is in working order, and that category would include the Libertas as well as the Selmers, Leblancs, Buffets, Yamahas, etc. Ridenour does not do much national advertising and you can't walk into most local music stores and pick up one of his instruments, new or used. That's probably why you don't see lots of jazz players using them.
An interesting fact about Tom Ridenour, the designer of the Libertas, is that in his early years, he listened avidly to Pete Fountain, and Fountain's playing motivated Tom to take up the clarinet! Ridenour says "I ended up being a professional musician because of him [Fountain]." So Tom Ridenour is no stranger to the jazz idiom. I would ask him what he thinks about playing jazz on his Libertas clarinet. Read Ridenour's comments here as he expresses his appreciation of Fountain's playing with the Welk Band on "Tiger Rag":
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lawrence+welk+pete+fountain+tiger+rag.
Post Edited (2016-07-17 22:33)
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The Clarinet BBoard
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