Thursday, May 23, happens to be the 114th birthday anniversary of famous jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw. What better way to celebrate a larger-than-life American musician than to play his exhilarating ...

Artie Shaw, who died yesterday at age 94 at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., was a clarinetist and bandleader who swiped Downbeat magazine’s “King of Swing” moniker from Benny Goodman in 1938.

On clarinet, Shaw had a fuller, more-dulcet tone than Goodman. Although Goodman was labeled the “King of Swing,” jazz enthusiasts still debate whether Shaw better deserved the sobriquet, and his fans ...

On the upcoming 100th anniversary of Artie Shaw's birth, Fresh Air remembers one of jazz's greatest clarinetists and big-band leaders with excerpts from a 1985 interview. In the 1930s and '40s, the ...

Sixty-five years or so ago, the biggest star in Hollywood, as well as the biggest stud, was a clarinetist whose combination of good looks, extraordinary musical talent, and great intelligence made him ...

Artie Shaw will always be a bit of a puzzle to his fans—"morons, " as he once characterized some of us. The best band he ever fronted, and said so more than once, was his 1949-50 "bop" band. Benny ...

At his peak in the 1930s and ’40s, Artie Shaw, the brilliant clarinetist and bandleader, ranked with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller as musicians whose swinging tunes kept a generation ...

The terms "brilliant" and "perfectionist" aptly describe Artie Shaw. In addition to his renown as a musician, Shaw was also: author of his autobiography, novels and short stories; an advanced ...