Artie Shaw Talking

In the early 1940s, Artie Shaw, at the height of his fame as a swing bandleader and clarinetist, introduced my father and mother. In the 1960s, long after he had put down the clarinet for good, he published a book, "I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead!" comprising three novellas, the middle one of which is a fictionalized account of my parents' relationship. I read it, found it interesting, and Shaw himself even more interesting for his decision to give up his career in music. Shaw's playing had evolved at the same time that the big-band era waned, so the reason he quit has always been an open question. Still, Camus wrote that the man who says "no" says "yes," and there is an enduring mystery in such figures as Duchamp, to take another example, who stake out a position at the borderline between art and life, creation and reality.

Years later, I put Shaw's name on the comp list for a book of mine published in 1985. In 1988, when I was living in Thousand Oaks, I noticed that Shaw's address made him my neighbor. I had another book coming out and again added his name to the comp list. When Shaw received the book, he telephoned, and my wife Gailyn and I had dinner with him at an Italian restaurant in Camarillo, where he was well-known. As that evening illustrated, the first and perhaps last thing to be said about Artie Shaw is that he is a nonstop talker, a monologuist, and, at his best, an inspired one. (It occurred to me that his talking might have replaced his playing.)

Afterward, Artie took us back to his house and upstairs to his book-lined study, where he played us his 1941 recording of "Star Dust." It was the first time I'd listened to his music, and his solo was breathtaking, like a beautiful bird swooping through heaven and hell. "Benny Goodman played clarinet," he said that night, "I played music." And then: "Benny never played his dark side."

Eventually, Gailyn and I and Artie and his girlfriend at the time, Midge Hayes, a librarian he had met in Santa Barbara, became quite close. Shaw had written an autobiography, "The Trouble With Cinderella," but it stopped short of his years as a big-band era legend and also told nothing of his celebrated marriages to Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. So one day I invited Artie to lunch to ask him about recording conversations for a biography covering the later part of his life. We began making the recordings. After a while, though, our relationship cooled. I went on to other things and put the tapes and manuscript aside.