[Dixielandjazz] Putte Wickman Obit

[Steve Voce]

On 11/07/2011 14:47, Stephen G Barbone wrote:
> Oh God!
Shows how I'm losing it. When I saw the message titled 'Putte Wickman Obit' I thought I was going to have to write

his obituary. Didn't realise I already had!

Steve Voce

> 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.
>
>
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