The Man Who Rivaled the King
In the golden age of Swing, Benny Goodman was 'The King,' but Artie Shaw was his only true rival. A clarinetist of astonishing technical skill and creative vision, Shaw shot to fame in the late 1930s with his blockbuster recording of "Begin the Beguine."
He was more than just a pop star; he was a restless innovator who experimented with adding strings to his orchestra, creating a lush, sophisticated sound that would later be called "Third Stream" music. But with his matinee idol looks and soaring fame came a profound unease. Shaw was a self-described "very difficult man" who loathed the commercial demands of stardom, the endless repetition of his hits, and the screaming bobby-soxers. He saw himself as a serious artist trapped in the machinery of mass entertainment.
A Concerto for Hollywood
The near-mythical incident of the discarded recording took place in 1940. Shaw and his orchestra were in Hollywood to appear in the Fred Astaire movie "Second Chorus." For the film, Shaw composed and performed his ambitious "Concerto for Clarinet." The piece was a tour de force, a multi-part work that blended bluesy boogie-woogie passages with dazzling classical-style cadenzas, all built around his singular, soaring clarinet. It was complex, demanding, and quintessentially Shaw. The pressure of the Hollywood soundstage, combined with his own relentless standards, set the stage for a dramatic moment of artistic crisis. The film itself was not a major success, but Shaw's composition would become one of his most enduring legacies.
Frustration in the Studio
The legend goes that during the recording session, Shaw became intensely frustrated. Whether it was with his own playing, the orchestra's performance, or the pressures of the session, he felt the take was flawed. In a fit of pique, he declared it worthless. The quote in the headline—"I almost threw the tape away"—is the popular version of the story, though in 1940 he would have been working with a direct-to-disc lacquer master, not magnetic tape. Details vary in the telling, but the core of the anecdote remains: Shaw was ready to scrap the master recording. It was only the intervention of a colleague or a sound engineer who, recognizing the brilliance of the performance, saved it from oblivion. That rescued take became the definitive version of one of his signature works.
The Curse of the Perfectionist
This single story is a perfect metaphor for Artie Shaw’s entire career. He was an artist who, by his own admission, was cursed with perfectionism. He once told an interviewer that he quit playing the clarinet in 1954 because he felt he had taken the instrument as far as it could go, and to continue would be a disservice. He famously walked away from his million-dollar-a-year band at the height of its fame in 1939 because he couldn't stand playing the same hits over and over. For Shaw, the pursuit of an impossible ideal was everything. He compared himself to the violinist Jascha Heifetz, who could be bothered by hitting 93 on a scale of 100, because he could hear the difference. Shaw heard that difference, too, and it haunted him.
