Find yourself a comfortable seat and watch this riveting story. Not only does it trace the giddy highs and gut-wrenching lows of jazz musician Artie Shaw’s life but it also doubles as an examination of the uneasy stresses between an artistic sensibility and the all-consuming demands of the entertainment industry.

Watching the elderly Shaw unspool his personal history, there’s an uncanny feeling that the vulnerable only child, Arthur Arshawsky, persecuted at school for being Jewish, isn’t far distant.

In order to counter the schoolyard bullies, the teenage Arthur becomes a whizz at manipulating a saxophone, even producing hot jazz choruses, unhampered by any ability to read music. On discovering that no professional band will hire a non-reader, he applies himself and rectifies the problem within a month, a considerable achievement. And, within a few years, the now renamed Art Shaw is Manhattan’s first call alto session musician. Like all session reedmen, he’s now doubling on clarinet, an unforgiving instrument. Except that he’s managed to conquer all its idiosyncrasies including the complicated fingerings of its daunting highest register, all accomplished with a sumptuous tone unequalled by any other jazz master (of course, there was always his closest rival, Benny Goodman, a.k.a. ‘The King of Swing’, but Shaw’s tone seemed to possess a more emotional edge).

Then, in the mid-1930s, after a pioneering experiment with a string quartet, he decides to form a band. Overcoming a handful of wrinkles in a very few years, Shaw propels his big band from obscurity to screaming jitterbug success in very little time. Astounded by the resulting financial tsunami, he’s able to acquire himself a new Patek Phillippe watch every week.

Despite his rapid ascent, the bullying continues. While still a session musician recording jingles for radio ads, Shaw resents lending his considerable skills to support hucksterism. Then, later as a bandleader, he’s exasperated by insensitive ballroom operators, jostled by Philistine fans, enraged by Hollywood movie directors and provoked by Deep South bigotry.

From visual evidence supplied, there’s a degree of ambiguity as to whether Shaw, with his matinee idol profile (he’s persuaded to star in a couple of feature movies), snazzy threads (a dazzling range of sports coats) and costly Swiss wristwatches, disdains all the trappings and implications of personal success. But clearly, he loathes its effect on his personal life and privacy.

Disgusted by the grasping demands of showbiz and disillusioned with the jitterbug fans who seemingly rate his fame/notoriety above his zealous musical goals, he quits the industry (a recurrent theme). Shaw decamps to Mexico, returning a few months later humming ‘Frenesi’, a lilting Latin melody. Shaw forms a new band and ‘Frenesi’ became the No. 1 hit in the U.S.

Emotionally and temperamentally, Shaw emerges as a driven spirit. Each time he rejects the music business, he reinvents himself. He hires outstanding Afro-American jazz talents like Billie Holiday, Oran ‘Hot Lips’ Page and Roy Eldridge, stoking deep South prejudice and raising humiliations even in New York City. In 1941, when Pearl Harbour is attacked, Shaw folds yet another band and joins the Navy, assembling a new big organisation to tour the South Pacific front lines. Six months later, he has a nervous breakdown.

Incapable of committing to moderation, life for Shaw is anything but simple. By his own admission, he relishes total control (once a leader has raised the baton on 16 musicians, the sensation becomes addictive). His libido makes headlines as gossip columnists lubriciously report his associations with glamourous Hollywood stars. That, and his trail of eight failed marriages.

But, the most surprising issue of all, Shaw is an articulate intellectual (observe many stacked bookshelves and chess sets in background shots), deadly serious about the music he performs. And almost definitely the only swing bandleader to have read Proust.

So, in 1949, as the Swing Era collapses and his latest new band is deemed a flop, Shaw quits yet again and buys a dairy farm in Duchess County to enter one of the most contented periods of his life. And, in 1952, he writes ‘The Trouble With Cinderella’, possibly the most literate offering from any jazz musician, which receives enthusiastic notices.

Unsurprisingly, Shaw, the intellectual, also has political leanings which, in paranoid post-war U.S.A., place him under cross examination by Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Devastated by the experience of being subpoenaed, Shaw quits the U.S., moving to Bagur in South-Eastern Spain where he designs and constructs a cliff-hugging house. According to ex-wife, Evelyn Keyes, Shaw becomes an authority on fish, fishing and astronomy. Confiding that many of his opinions verged on the dictatorial, she states: “Every time I change the toilet roll, I think of Artie Shaw”, but suggests that, if he’d had a different personality, he’d never have reached his phenomenal level of competence and artistry on the clarinet.

Finally, after hostilities have subsided and flaws are forgotten, we’re left with the musical legacy. And that’s where this documentary finds Shaw at his most vulnerable. The questing camera, in tight close-up, watches as he reacts to some of his recordings. His facial muscles are a dead giveaway, microscopic smiles twitching to fond memories of rapturous licks and exquisite phrases.

Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got is a totally engrossing biography of a complex perfectionist (did you know he was also the fourth-rated marksman in the U.S.?) And we have to thank the perceptive writer/editor/director/producer Brigitte Berman who, between 1982 and 1984, interviewed Shaw and all the other contributors.

Ms Berman’s judicious use of press cuttings, Hollywood clips and contemporary newsreel footage re-ignites the energy and excitement of the Swing Era. Patiently filmed talking heads and subtle editing take care of the rest. Should we be surprised that the original version won the 1986 Academy Award for best feature documentary?

from https://ukjazznews.com