[Dixielandjazz] Kenny Davern Information

[Steve Barbone]

List mates:

Please forgive yet another p[osting about Davern but IMO, he is a Giant
among giants in the jazz world. This is the best bio information I've found
about him.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


About Kenny, Will Friedwald has written aptly in 'The New York Times,' "Mr.
Davern is probably the finest clarinetist playing today." Whether this
encomium was meant to extend beyond the field of Jazz is less important than
the fact that Kenny Davern has achieved in his playing beyond just his
astonishing mastery of the clarinet what all Jazz musicians aspire to but
only a handful ever reach, a unique and sterling voice, instantly
recognizable, deeply personal.

Born on Long Island, New York in 1935, the child of a broken marriage, young
Kenny Davern passed through nine foster homes before being settled with his
mother's parents in Queens. "My grandfather was a red-haired, blue-eyed
descendant of Austro-Hungarian army people and my grandmother was a little
peasant woman from the then-occupied Lithuania. They were Jewish, and my
father's side was Irish-Catholic."

Kenny came to his awareness of Jazz during the years of World War II when
the swing music of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and the
Dorsey Brothers was the popular music of the day. Some of the hottest names
in music were clarinet players. Artie Shaw's playing especially impressed
Kenny. He pleaded with his mother to buy him a clarinet. She found one for
sale up the block for $35 -an outmoded Albert system, on which he learned
the fundamentals of the instrument. Eventually, he acquired a Boehm system
clarinet, and made the switch-over to this more efficient fingering.

Though his first awareness of Jazz was the music of the big bands, it was
really the small group Jazz of the '30s and '40s that enthralled his ear and
molded his style. "In those days, I was listening to 'Ted Husing's
Bandstand,' and for 15 minutes of each day he'd play Dixieland Jazz. One
particular day, I heard this thing and whack!, it was like a baseball bat
between the eyes. I stood transfixed. I said, 'I want to spend the rest of
my life doing that.'" The sound Kenny had heard over the radio, the sound
that fixed the direction of his musical career was the quirky, plaintive,
angular meandering of Pee Wee Russell's clarinet on the Commodore recording
of 'Memphis Blues' by Muggsy Spanier's Ragtimers.

In the thoroughly personal voice that Kenny Davern has evolved over the five
decades of his career, Pee Wee Russell's sound certainly vibrates palpably
as an impetus, an inspiration. Nonetheless, Kenny's voice has, from the
beginning, been completely his own. It is a voice combining power and
flawless command of this almost devilishly difficult instrument with subtle
and perfect melodic and harmonic intelligence. The articulation of his notes
is unerring and silken at any speed. His whispered musings command the
attention of even the most chattering, self-absorbed audience. Or he can cut
through a raucous, brassy ensemble in a controlled, but visceral siren wail
that rises above and floats over the athletic counterpoint of a trumpet, a
trombone, drums and two-fisted piano. Ordinarily, even in large spaces,
Kenny will impatiently wave off approaching sound men with their microphones
and amplifiers. He doesn't need them. He is enamoured of reed and wood; why
would he want to squeeze so pure a sound through a wiry maze of electronics?
Put Kenny in a room and he'll fill it with the sound of his clarinet.

In high school, he and some friends (trombonist Larry O'Brien, for one, who
went on to lead the Glenn Miller Band) started a Dixieland combo. The Band's
drummer, Bobby Grauso's father (the drummer, Joe Grauso) used to take the
boys to clubs like the old Eddie Condon's, near Washington Square, where
they heard their idols play in person: Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett, Pee
Wee Russell, Lou McGarity, Walter Page and others. Jazz legend Henry "Red"
Allen hired Kenny for gigs when he was 16. At 18, he went on the road with
pianist Ralph Flanagan's big band, but the next year, when the opportunity
to join Jack Teagarden's Dixieland band came up, he jumped at it. As popular
and successful as Flanagan was, when Kenny gave him his notice, Ralph asked,
"Do they need a piano player?" It was with Teagarden that Kenny made his
first Jazz recording.

In 1955, although the Teagarden band had been booked for an extended
engagement in California, a union regulation requiring six-months' residency
for a member to work in a new jurisdiction would have benched Kenny for half
a year had he stayed with Teagarden. Instead, he joined Phil Napoleon's
'Memphis Five,' then touring the East Coast. During the next few years,
Kenny worked often at the legendary Nick's in Greenwich Village, not only
with Napoleon, but also with Pee Wee Erwin's Jazz Band, and finally with his
own band, the "Washington Squares," that included Johnny Windhurst, Cutty
Cutshall, Dave Frishberg, Cliff Leeman and Jack Six. During this period he
also appeared frequently at two cavernous, beery Jazz landmarks - The
Central Plaza and The Stuyvesant Casino.

In 1961, Kenny joined clarinetist/entertainer Ted Lewis for a month-long
engagement at New York's Roseland Ballroom. From 1962 to 1963, he was with
the Dukes of Dixieland. A highlight of his tenure with the Dukes is the
remarkable Gospel album the band recorded with the Clara Ward Singers. In
1963, he was in the on-stage band for the nine-week run on Broadway of June
Havoc's 'Marathon '33,' starring Julie Harris. Over the years, Kenny has
also appeared on the screen and the soundtracks of several movies, including
'The Hustler,' 'The Gig,' and 'The Mighty Aphrodite.'

Later in the '60s, at an extended gig at The Ferry Boat along the New Jersey
shore in Brielle, Kenny began what would evolve into a long-term working
association with pianist Dick Wellstood. The two had known each other, and
occasionally worked together since the early '50s, but it was only now that
their association blossomed into the very special relationship that reached
its zenith in their collaborations as a duo, recording under such whimsical
names as "Dick Wellstood and his Famous Orchestra, featuring Kenny Davern."
Between Wellstood's omnivorous imagination, his powerful, all-ten-fingers
style of piano-playing, and Kenny's lyrical, soaring clarinet, it was no
hyperbole to refer to this two-man outfit as an "orchestra." It was during
this period, too, that Kenny was called to replace the late Buster Bailey
with Louis Armstrong's All-Stars. "But I was working at the Ferry Boat with
Jack Six, Dick Wellstood, Al McManus and Eddie Hubble" he explains. "We had
a great band; I was a mile from my house and I was courting my wife. I would
have had to go out for six months with Louis, but I had too many wonderful
things going for me, so I turned it down."

In the 1970s, the club scene for traditional forms of Jazz having all but
evaporated, Kenny began finding more and more of his work at Jazz festivals
and Jazz parties. 'The Jazz party' was more or less the invention of Dick
Gibson, a Denver entrepreneur and Jazz aficionado whose annual Colorado
Springs event brought together outstanding mainstream musicians from across
the country every Labor Day weekend for three days of non-stop Jazz.
Regulars included Clark Terry, Billy Butterfield, Benny Carter, Al Cohn,
Zoot Sims, Trummy Young, Carl Fontana, Urbie Green, Roland Hanna, Ralph
Sutton, Ray Brown, Milt Hinton, Bob Haggart, Grady Tate, Gus Johnson, Joe
Venuti and many others. It was at one of Gibson's Colorado Springs parties
that Kenny (who was playing soprano saxophone at the time) was teamed with
Bob Wilber to play a version of 'The Mooche,' and their lengthy and prolific
association as 'Soprano Summit,' was born. The group has recorded a dozen
memorable albums so far.

In 1978, Kenny teamed up with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy (a former
colleague on the Dixieland scene in the '50s and '60s), Paul Motian and
Steve Swallow to record an adventurous free-Jazz album titled 'Unexpected.'
In this format of ensemble playing, freed from the strictures of set chord
sequences, or "changes," Kenny sees connections and analogies to the older
New Orleans style of Jazz, in which group improvisation, rather than the
solo performance, forms the central focus of the music.

In the 1980s and '90s, Kenny has continued to be featured at festivals and
Jazz parties throughout the U.S. and Europe. He has appeared often at the
Newport Jazz Festivals, and has traveled abroad with the New York Jazz
Repertory Company under the direction of Dick Hyman. He has played at the
Nice, North Sea, and Brecon Festivals, as well as the prestigious Edinburgh
Festival. Aside from the festivals, Kenny has toured throughout Europe as a
featured soloist. He played for President Carter at the White House, and has
performed at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, Royal
Albert Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, and other celebrated venues around the
world. 

Over the past decade Kenny has issued a series of at least half a dozen
albums that spotlight his playing with just a rhythm section. In 1992, he
produced the CD 'Kenny Davern: My Inspiration,' a collaboration with
bassist/composer/arranger Bob Haggart, on which he is backed by a string
orchestra and rhythm section. "It's every player's dream to perform with
strings," Kenny says of this album. "Charlie Parker always said his string
sessions were his favorite recordings." The arrangements are by Haggart, the
songs are wonderful standards, and Kenny's playing is quintessential.

In 1997, Kenny Davern was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame. In May 2000,
he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Hamilton College.

AND

"I've had a romantic thing about the clarinet ever since I heard Artie
Shaw's Clarinet Concerto being played on the radio," says clarinetist Kenny
Davern. "Then I heard clarinetists Pee Wee Russell, Irving Fazola, Johnny
Dodds - and that just whacked me between the eyes, and I've been dedicated
to improvisation ever since." One of Davern's biggest influences was David
Weber. "He taught me the foundations of clarinet playing. He's wonderful.
He's a direct link to the great tradition of clarinet playing." As a 16 year
old professional, Davern would sit in with many of New York City's legendary
groups, eventually landing himself a spot with Jack Teagarden's Band. He
played with Phil Napoleon's band the next year, and soon began to form his
own jazz groups. The late '50s and early '60s saw Davern working with dozens
of the jazz world's top performers, including Billy Butterfield, Pee Wee
Erwin, Ruby Braff, Eddie Condon, Ted Lewis, the Dukes of Dixieland, George
Wettling, "Wild Bill" Davison, Bud Freeman, Shorty Baker, and many others.
In the late '60s, Davern continued to play in and around New York City at
top clubs like Nick's, and at festivals around the country. It was in 1973
that Soprano Summit released their first album, and in 1975 the unique group
was officially formed. Davern and reed star Bob Wilber were perfect
partners, and Soprano Summit's short life made a huge impact on the jazz
world. After Soprano Summit, Davern began touring Europe and playing
festivals around the world. He performed for President Carter at the White
House in the late '70's, and in the early '80s he formed The Blue Three with
Dick Wellstood and Bobby Rosengarden. After he released an album and toured
Britain with the group, Davern spent most of the rest of the decade in high
demand at clubs, concerts, and festivals with the likes of Trummy Young,
Yank Lawson, and Charlie Byrd. He has played Carnegie Hall numerous times
and performed on several soundtracks, including Mighty Aphrodite, The Gig,
and The Hustler, in which he also appeared. Davern was inducted into the
American Jazz Hall of Fame in 1997. Always busy, Davern is a master at
playing virtually all of the saxophone family (having studied with Joe
Napoleon), but has concentrated mostly on his incredible clarinet talents.
Though he incorporates modern techniques and developments into his music, he
never forgets his traditional roots. "I guess I'm a boss eclectic. I've
tried to utilize all that's come before me to form something of my own,"
says Davern. "Jazz isn't something you can just label. You can ask ten
people what jazz is and you'll get ten different answers. But to learn jazz,
you have to be able to hear it. You can go to school and learn all of the
harmonies and everything. It doesn't mean anything if you don't hear it."