[Dixielandjazz] Artie Shaw Centenary on BBC Radio - Saturday

[John Petters]

*Eight wives and a clarinet*
 
May 23 is the centenary of the bandleader *Artie Shaw*. He died in 2005, 
aged 94. He was the remaining survivor of the great bandleaders of the 
Swing Era. Think of the likes of Benny Goodman, Harry James, Glenn 
Miller and Tommy Dorsey. They were real stars, mobbed and sobbed over 
the way boy bands are nowadays.
 
Artie Shaw was so famous that when World War Two broke out /Time/ 
magazine reported that, for most Germans, the United States meant 
"skyscrapers, Clark Gable and Artie Shaw".
 
Shaw was no fan of his fans, referring to them as "morons", especially 
when they scratched their phone numbers in the paintwork of his car. He 
said that as far as female fans were concerned he was merely "catnip".
 
He was a kind of matrimonial hero, marrying eight times. Among the wives 
were the screen legends *Lana Turner* and *Ava Gardner*. None of the 
marriages went the distance. "These love goddesses are not what they 
seem," he said.
 
He was disenchanted by the music business too and quit eventually to 
concentrate on writing, and reading. He learned French so he could read 
all of Proust, a tough enough job even in translation.
 
Somebody to celebrate? I'd say so, and *The Late Paul Barnes* will be 
doing it at 23.00 on *Saturday, May 22 *on the following BBC stations: 
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Northampton and 3CR 
(Beds, Bucks, Herts). And of course it's on the web: 
www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk <http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk> live or "listen again"
 
Pass it on!

-- 
John Petters
Amateur Radio Station G3YPZ 
www.traditional-jazz.com