[Dixielandjazz] Putte Wickman Obit

[Stephen G Barbone]

Here is Listmate Steve Voce's Obit on Wickman from the London  
Independent. Interestingly enough, Putte Wickmanm claimed to be 100%  
self taught, having never taken a lesson. There is also some of his  
classical work on you tube. Is his playing too cool? Not in my ears.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Putte Wickman - Impeccable jazz clarinettist

Hans-Olof "Putte" Wickman, clarinettist and bandleader: born Borlänge,  
Sweden 10 September 1924; twice married (two sons, two daughters);  
died Grycksbo, Sweden 14 February 2006.


Whilst his jazz might not have been something that Louis Armstrong  
would have relished, Putte Wickman was certainly one of the most  
articulate of clarinet players, and bestrode the Swedish jazz scene  
for more than half a century.

His impeccable talent was such that, unusually for a jazz musician, he  
could move happily from jazz into the realms of orchestral and chamber  
music. This was not something that Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw could  
do without sounding ill at ease. When listening to those two essaying  
the classics, one was never able to suspend the feeling that they  
shouldn't really have been there.

Wickman spanned their generation but also revelled in the company of  
the later clarinettists Buddy De Franco and Eddie Daniels, virtuosi  
all, who turned the angular innovations of Charlie Parker on the alto  
sax into liquid gold for the clarinet. Wickman recorded duets with De  
Franco in 1999 and with Daniels in 2001.

Only a chauvinist would deny that Swedish jazz is as good as any that  
you can find outside the United States. For every Tubby Hayes or Stan  
Tracey we could offer, the Swedes have had a Lars Gullin, an Arne  
Domnerus, a Jan Lundgren or a Bengt Hallberg. Wickman worked amongst  
them and was by a mile the best jazz clarinet player that Europe has  
produced.

His followers complain that he is unfairly tagged as being a man whose  
playing is low on emotion. But the truth is that, although he never  
seemed to play a solo that wasn't beautifully constructed and brimming  
with good ideas, he was sometimes to the glacial side of cool.

Always loyal to the now out-of-fashion clarinet, Wickman was first  
inspired by the Swing Era work of Goodman and Shaw. He began his  
career in 1944 with a summer tour in the band led by the violinist  
Hasse Kahn and then worked with a myriad Swedish bands until returning  
to Kahn's sextet in 1947. A year later, Kahn was called for military  
service and Wickman took over the leadership. The distinguished  
musician Reinhold Svensson stayed in the band as pianist and arranger  
with Wickman until 1960.

In 1949, Wickman was a member of the Swedish All Stars that played at  
that year's Paris Jazz Festival and the clarinettist subsequently  
toured Europe with that group. The sextet, oriented to the music of  
Parker and Gillespie, became nationally popular and in 1959 Wickman  
was invited to the United States as a soloist. He played with several  
bands in New York and appeared at Carnegie Hall in an all-star line-up.

Wickman switched to more popular music when, in the middle Sixties, he  
formed a big band for dancing and he also ran Putte's, his own dance  
hall, in Stockholm for a couple of years.

In his later years, Wickman worked with the trio of the pianist Claes  
Crona as his accompanists. He toured in the United States again in 1981.

Ill for some time before his death, he toured Sweden in September last  
and continued to play until November. In January he abandoned a  
proposed trip to record an album for the producer Dick Bank in Los  
Angeles, but was determined to press ahead with a national tour of  
Sweden that was due to start in mid-February. It was only two weeks  
before his death that he finally cancelled the bookings.