One of my favorite Shaw recordings, by his great band of the early 40's. Listen, especially, to that trombone section: Ray Conniff, Jack Jenney, and Vernon Brown. It doesn't get any better than that.
Shaw's post war band. It was a terrific orchestra but never got the acclaim that his earlier bands did. The recordings he did for Victor with this band are among his very very best.
Artie's arrangements from this period are rather annoying in that there is often too much fragmentation of the melody. A section starts to lay out an idea and in no time another section of the band takes over--only to be interrupted by yet another section. The overall dynamic is very aggressive and overall too loud and pushy in much of the section work. (Recording level too high as well?) Of course AS's clarinet work is without peer, regardless of his band or arrangements of the moment. His command of the upper altissimo (Stardust...) is just, WOW!
I generally agree with this assessment. However, the issue is not so much the recording level as the band’s overall dynamic. They are playing very forcefully most of the time, especially the brass. I believe that it would have sounded nicer and a bit less frantic if they had taken the whole thing down from f in most places to mf. The brass should avoid playing in ff where they are close to distorting their sound. Of course, Shaw himself never does that. He lets the notes simply glide out of the his clarinet at mp or mf, letting the sound guys ensure that they are picked up separately from the rest of the band. Shaw supposedly found great fault with the quality of recording at RCA at the time. And he certainly was a great artist who understood the concepts of balance and dynamics with an ensemble. I wonder if he felt that he needed heavy dynamics from the ensemble in order to compensate for RCA’s inability to create separation or a feeling of presence. In this respect, I note the extreme contrast between these RCA recordings from 1945 to his small group recordings in 1954, where he himself was the chief engineer. Granted, technology had improved by 1954, but the overall approach was markedly different. I also note that Columbia recordings of the mid 1940’s seem to better capture a musical and balanced ensemble, including Goodman’s. Overall, Artie Shaw was a great artist and leader. But his RCA recordings from the mid 1940’s, although very enjoyable, were not the finest examples of his art. This is just the opinion of another clarinetist. RIP, AS./WEB
