[Dixielandjazz] woody clarinet

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I have heard little of the Woody Allen clarinet -- Woody Herman yes, but, well, anyway . . . Mr. Allen is something of a connoisseur or maybe hyperaesthesiac aficionado of various sounds produced by various gentlemen of New Orleans who used to be seen raising the reed end of the clarinet to their lips, and seeming to people born stone deaf to be doing something similar to what such masters as Russell Procope and Kim Cusack and Dave Bennett etc. have been seen doing with the same black implement. 
Mr. Allen has even had a short series broadcast on BBC Radio 3, in the course of which he differentiated between certain sounds respective to these New Orleanian gents, very elderly but probably a little younger than and not quite as famous as George Lewis, ne HF Zeno. One suspects he is a little too preoccupied with certain singularities displayed by local folk musicians, and that what he does on clarinet expresses a curiosity about what these alas no longer living musicians did at their furthest from anything you'd hear on a record by Gervaise de Peyer or the late Jack Brymer (the latter did display a staggering command of the beauties of the instrument when a guest with a band of former Goodmanites, touring Britain). 
When learning some of the compositions which he recorded with wonderful results Mr. Brymer certainly gazed at the printed scores. I am sure that he and Woody Allen alas were (JB) and are to be regarded as equally sincere and dedicated to playing their music. The constant object of Mr. Allen's gaze, whatever attention he has paid to printed scores, when playing or talking about what has interested him in the playing of various old New Orleanians, does seem to be his navel. This much he has in common with some very different woodwind players of impeccable academic musical credentials, those wearisome tenor saxophone wielders best described as Trane clones. They don't say anything.  

       
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