[Dixielandjazz] Kenny Davern's Favorite Albums?

[Steve Barbone]

Some folks are asking me off list what Davern albums to consider buying.
They are all excellent. However he liked "My Inspiration" which was a
collaboration with Bob Haggart's arrangements complete with strings. (Like
Charlie Parker, he was gassed to play with strings)

He also liked "Dick Wellstood and His All-Star Orchestra Featuring Kenny
Davern", Chiaroscuro in 1973. The title is misleading as the ³orchestra²
consisted solely of Davern on sop sax and Wellstood on piano. The liner
notes, a real kick, are by William F. Buckley, Jr., and they end with this
Buckleyesque pronouncement about the All-Star Orchestra: ³I hope you like
it. If you don¹t, I¹m sorry about that; sorry about you.²

It is a marvelous mixture of stride piano and Sop Sax. Check out "Fast
Bastard" or "Sweet Georgia Brown" or "Wild Man Blues". The way Davern and
Wellstood play off one another is incredible.

It has been re-issued and is available at the usual places.

Also, below is the Steve Voce obit. Voce is the Dean of Jazz Obit writers
and so I had to post it.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Clarinetist Kenny Davern Dies At 71
   
By Steve Voce 

John Kenneth Davern, clarinetist and saxophonist: born Huntington, New York
7 January 1935; married 1970 Elsa Lass (one stepson, one stepdaughter); died
Sandia Park, New Mexico 12 December 2006.

³Louis Armstrong can say something with one note, but then there are others
who take an hour to rev up and wind up with a fart in a bathtub.²

Although Kenny Davern became one of the most effective jazz clarinettists of
the last 50 years, he always regarded a trumpeter, Louis Armstrong, as the
wellspring of his inspiration. Unusually for a clarinet player he had a
forceful attack, almost as though he was playing the trumpet. He played the
instrument with great fire and probably more passion than any other
clarinettist playing today.

³When I was a kid we'd go to Bop City and Birdland to listen to Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell. Bird was a great musician but his
points of reference were different from mine.I thought the real jazz was
Louis Armstrong and I still do.

³I can listen to 'Jubilee' by Louis Armstrong and know that good will
triumph after all and that there's justice in the world.²

Self-taught, Davern was given an old Albert system clarinet when he was 11.
Three years later he acquired a more convential Boehm system instrument. He
began playing professionally when he was 16 and three months after he left
high school auditioned for the big band led by Ralph Flanagan.

³When I got there were about ten guys ahead of me, but I went up to the
manager and said 'Let me play, I gotta be somewhere, I have an
appointment..Then Flanagan went over to the piano and we played two choruses
of ³Muskrat Ramble² and that was it.'²

In the Flanagan band he was required to play alto and baritone saxophones as
well as clarinet. He stayed for a year, leaving because he couldn't stand
life on the road. 

Perhaps he was fortunate in being a New Yorker, for all his formative work
was in the city, often playing with the jazz greats of earlier years.

³To be on the bandstand with a Roy Eldridge or a Buck Clayton is an honour
and a privilege not granted to everyone. Making harmonious music with such
people in your formative years, you come away with something in your head.
Call it tradition if you must, although it's a word I hate - maybe because I
overreacted to it by playing revival music at one time.²

Back in New York he rejoined Flanagan on a temporary basis. One of the
saxophone players asked him how he'd like to play with Jack Teagarden.

³I was gassed. I joined the band at the Meadowbrook, played a couple of
tunes and got off the stand. Teagarden hadn't said anything so I went over
to him and asked how I'd done. He smiled and said 'Where've you been?'

After Teagarden, with whom he recorded with in 1954 when he was 19, Davern
freelanced in the city and led his own band which he called his Washington
Squares. It included his friends and contemporaries Dave Frishberg and
Johnny Windhurst. He worked with Ruby Braff, Wild Bill Davison, Billy
Butterfield, Bud Freeman and for Eddie Condon at Condon's club. He also
appeared in the play ³Marathon 33² on Broadway. The play starred Julie
Harris and the band, which stayed on stage throughout, included Davern's
long-time colleague and pianist Dick Wellstood.

An avant-garde band that Davern helped to run in the Fifties that included
Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd and played arrangements by Carla Bley and
Cecil Taylor inspired the remark at the beginning of this piece. Davern also
appeared along with Rudd in the film The Hustler (1961).

Following a jazz party in 1973 where he and fellow clarinettist Bob Wilber
played together they formed the band Soprano Summit - two soprano saxophones
and a rhythm section. The band lasted until 1979 and recorded several
albums, including reunion ones in 1991 and 1997. The soprano sax is a
difficult instrument and Davern became bored with it and returned to the
clarinet after a couple of years.

When the band broke up he worked in small groups and led a trio with Dick
Wellstood called The Blue Three. He and Wellstood worked together until the
pianist's death in 1987. He frequently worked with two other pianists, Ralph
Sutton and Dick Hyman. He toured Europe with the New York Jazz Repertory and
the successful Kings Of Jazz and appeared regularly on jazz cruises and at
European jazz festivals. He worked in Australia and New Zealand in August
1988. 

A concert of his with Humphrey Lyttelton was recorded in 1982 and he
returned to record with Lyttelton in 1985.

He was described by Lyttelton as ³Fluent, hot and with as original a slant
on traditional clarinet as you'll find anywhere.²

In the Nineties he became much involved with the Arbors record label, where
he was given a free rein to record what he liked by the sensitive director
Mat Domber. 

Last year he put a band together for a one-night appearance at New York's
Tavern On The Green by an old friend, the film star Billy Crystal. He
visited Britain last summer with The Statesmen of Jazz.

Davern could have an alternative career in stand up comedy. He hated
microphones, preferring to play acoustically and in clubs would always turn
them off if he could, sometimes to the annoyance of the audience. He
answered complaints that his announcements couldn't be heard with ³I'm not
saying anything. Just passing the time.² He would elicit requests for tunes,
asking members of the audience who would respond with everything from early
New Orleans marches to, say, Artie Shaw's ³Concerto For Clarinet².

³I'm not going to play any of them,² Davern said. ³I just want to know where
your heads are at.²