[Dixielandjazz] Kenny Davern - NY SUN OBIT

[Steve Barbone]

Here is the NY Sun obit courtesy of Norman Vickers. Thanks Norman.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

Kenny Davern, 71, Leading Jazz Clarinet Player
By WILL FRIEDWALD Special to the Sun December 14, 2006

Kenny Davern <http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Kenny+Davern> ,
who died Tuesday at 71, was a jazz player regarded as one of the great
clarinet players of his generation.

In a career that stretched more than 50 years, Davern was widely hailed for
the beauty of his tone, for his facility on his instruments, and for his
ability to compose solos spontaneously that were light and airy but at the
same time solidly swinging and well grounded in the blues. He was a master
at playing in all registers, with a particularly distinctive tone in the
lower, chalameau range, and at all tempos.

Davern was born in Huntington, and lived for most of his life in New Jersey.
His original inspiration to play the clarinet was the great stylist Pee Wee
Russell. 

In a November 2005 interview, Davern told The New York Sun  "I was 14 years
old when I heard this record on the radio, ŒMemphis Blues' by Muggsy
Spanier's Ragtimers, and I heard Pee Wee for the first time. I heard all
these grunts and growls, sounds of spittle ‹ I had no idea even what horn he
was even playing but I said to myself, ŒThis is what I wanna do with my
life!'" 

In his first amateur band, Davern worked with the soprano saxist Steve Lacy
<http://www.nysun.com/related_results.php?term=Steve+Lacy>  and with Bobby
Grauso, a young drummer who introduced Davern to the famous bandleader and
club owner Eddie Condon. "He used to take us to the original Condon's. We
would stand on the side of the bandstand and I was ecstatic to hear those
guys play," Davern said last year. Within a short while, the young Davern
was sitting in with the Condon Mob.

Davern's first major professional engagement was with Ralph Flanagan's
orchestra, which was regarded as a carbon copy of that of the popular Glenn
Miller. He was playing baritone saxophone at the time ‹ the instrument on
which he initially joined the musicians' union. In 1954, he began playing
with one of the all-time giants of music, the trombonist Jack Teagarden.

"I left that big band, where I was making for $400 a week, to join Jack
Teagarden for $175 ‹ I didn't care about the money. Jack was wonderful, he
was a marvelous guy," Davern told the Sun.

Davern worked prolifically with Condon, Teagarden, George Wein, and other
leaders throughout the 1960s, and he was a particular favorite of trumpeters
such as Wild Bill Davison, Phil Napoleon, and Pee Wee Erwin; one of his more
unusual early projects was a jazz version of "Peter and the Wolf," narrated
by the actor Hans Conried, in which Davern played the role of the duck. He
recorded as leader with his band the Salty Dogs on several occasions, but
only began to come into his own as a star when he teamed with Bob Wilber to
form Soprano Summit.

After that group broke up around 1980 (they would later reunite as Summit
Reunion), Davern, at long last, began to record prolifically as a leader,
mostly in a series of quartets with guitar rather than piano. He made
roughly 25 albums in that many years, mostly for the MusicMasters and then
the Arbors Jazz labels.

For nearly all his career, Davern was a star in the traditional jazz field,
but he also recorded in a free jazz setting on several occasions with two
old friends, Lacy and trombonist Roswell Rudd.

Although he had earlier played both the baritone and soprano saxes, from
1980 on he concentrated exclusively on the clarinet. "I didn't want to
divide my attention between two mistresses," he told the Sun, further
explaining that the clarinet is such a demanding instrument that mastering
it required all the attention he could possibly give it. He ended the Sun
interview by quoting one of his mentors, the great swing clarinetist Johnny
Mince, who told him as a young man, "The clarinet never says thank you."